Mary P: A Memoir
by meldahlie
Summary: Do you know magic when you see it? The world's most competent nanny reminisces about the whys and hows of her days at Number 17, Cherry Tree Lane. A Mary Poppins/Harry Potter crossover.
1. Introduction

**Mary P : A Memoir**

Do you know magic when you see it?

The world's most competent nanny reminisces about the whys and hows of her days at No. 17, Cherry Tree Lane.

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_A/N: Almost everything belongs to J K Rowling and P L Travers. Please do not sue me or haunt me. Further thanks are due to Tabithatibi for casting a beta-ing eye over this.  
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_Dedicated to Nan, in loving memory of lemon cake and common sense._

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**Introduction **

I have always been somewhat of an eccentric. Looking back now from my old age, as I start to pen these memoirs, I can see that such eccentricity has been a feature of my character almost from babyhood, and was certainly well established by the time I, aged four, caused a family-wide upset by insisting on riding in a muggle donkey cart on Scarborough beach. From this point on began my sustained and active interest in muggles; an interest about which it would be an understatement to say that my family were not best pleased. There was even some concern voiced that it would prevent me from entering Slytherin, as a proper member of our family must. However, on my arrival at Hogwarts aged eleven, the Sorting Hat showed far less scruple and, I believe, far more common sense than my parents. Merely remarking that I had an unusual ambition, it admitted me without a qualm to the House of our forefathers.

My House, or at least its other occupants, approved of my interest little more than my parents had. Muggle-born wizards were bad enough – for a few hardy souls of such ancestry penetrated Slytherin in those days, to lurk unspeaking and unspoken to in the darkest corners – but as for common Muggles! A slight awareness of them might be regrettably necessary; a young and ambitious wizard aiming to fly high in the Ministry might need to know enough to pass among them without violating the International Statute of Secrecy; but to be curious about them for their own sake was simply not the thing!

But was a Slytherin ever deterred by discouragement or disapproval? Perhaps; yet since I did not come of a family given to putting their hands to the broom and then looking back, I was not. In time, my Housemates ceased to argue or mock. While never accepting my 'Gryffindor-like" curiosity, they came to preserve a tolerating silence.

My family was different. Many and varied were the vain arguments flung in my path, all of them boiling down to the simple fear that I would disgrace the name of the noble and most ancient house of – but here I see I must offer you an explanation. The issue of duty to one's family has been tragically much abused in late years, but to those of us who were raised in the ways of sensible responsibility to one's family and the ancient name which unites us, it is a way of life, a lesson which never leaves us. My family, from my parents to my brothers and distant second cousins, may all, and indeed have, disagreed with my path in life, but the fact remains that in taking my own path, I took a corresponding duty of privacy towards them, that they need not be affected in any way by what I have done. Therefore, in these pages I must continue to maintain the anonymity I have observed in the deeds recorded therein, and pass over the specifics of names. I beg you will excuse this, and hope that you will try to understand the familial love which motivates it.

Such understanding can be hard in youth. Certainly, as a young witch just out of Hogwarts I found myself repeatedly frustrated and even angered by those close to me who tried, lovingly I am now sure, to steer me towards more 'acceptable' interests. I would not be steered, found myself bored almost to tears by the idea of the normal social round of dances and 'at-homes,' all with the spectre of a 'respectable' marriage waiting in the wings. But, they were my family. And so, despite being of age and therefore independent, I sought to accommodate the kindly motives behind their wishes, and tried for a while to channel my curiosity within strictly magical spheres.

Transfiguration, my most pleasurable subject at school, offered various possibilities for such escape. I studied, researched, and became a moderately contented member of the International Society for Inter-Species Transfiguration (ISIST). There is a certain undefinable relief from the petty boredoms of upper-class society to be had in turning oneself into a cat or a hippopotamus, although I was never proficient enough to join the exalted ranks of those members who had become animagi.

Yet my efforts to be conventional, or at least conventionally eccentric, were never truly fulfilling. Try as I might, all paths seemed to lead back and back to muggles. Many of my new friends in the ISIST were muggle-born, while even those of magical extraction tended towards the far more eccentric than I, which had largely resulted in them living or working in much closer proximity to muggles than I had ever known before. We held branch meetings in muggle towns, talked in muggle cafés, and conversations as frequently ended up in explanations of steam engines and Bradshaw's European Railway Guide as discussing cross-species switching.

But such fascinating details were not all. The more I saw of my friends' confident integration into the muggle world, the more I began to wonder if the isolationist approach of mainstream magical society was really wisest. The doctrine of avoidance, complete and utter separation of magical from muggle, is drummed into our people from the earliest age. But that leaves us skulking, almost living in hiding, and ignorance breeds fear. As a member of upper-class magical society, I knew many sane and sensible witches of my generation and older. They were perfectly calm and capable of handling any magical pest including marauding dragons, but lived in actual fear of the muggles, the wandless, magic-less muggles, who were their neighbours.

The other mainstream approach to muggles, as epitomised by Cousin Elladora (three times removed but not nearly far enough, as my father used to say), I tried not to think about, although I had an idea that it may well have been fuelled by the fear from the retreatist approach. Neither example seemed to contradict my view that they were hopelessly flawed.

Nor was the opposite side of the Galleon any better. The muggle world was left with only the fearful folk memory of those witches and wizards who, for our own sake let alone that of our neighbours, should have been locked up long ago. To take but one historical example: if common sense had been applied in the case of Baba Yaga, given her history to that point with muggle children, Durmstrang would have been spared the hideous blot upon its chronicles of having its first and only headmistress arrested and summarily convicted, after six months in the post, of murdering and eating five of its students.

Study dragons, the proverb warns, and you may breathe fire. The more I observed of the muggle world, the more I became convinced that it would be possible for magical and muggle to co-exist safely. To my family, my acquaintances, my entire world, the idea was unthinkable, illegal, and impossible, for muggles were not like us! In vain did I point out the Statute of Secrecy simply forbids the muggles _knowing_ about magic. It says nothing about _using_ it where they don't notice it, or the muggle repelling charms on the Leaky Cauldron would be illegal. As for muggles being unlike us, my experience had found them no different to wizard-kind, and in many cases more tolerant. The Ministry Department for Magical Transport was extremely rude when I wished to book an international portkey to a muggle area of Paris, for an ISIST meeting. By contrast, when I got flustered ordering a muggle taxi to "Purge &amp; Dowse" instead of St. Mungo's, the cabby merely said "Takes yer time naow, Judy."

The actual problem, I came to see, was that the idea was unproven. Such is the way with new ideas. After all, the Society for the Conservation of the Golden Snidget existed to dash its wands against the rock of the International Quidditch Authorities for many years, before Bowman Wright forged the first golden Snitch in Godric's Hollow. The finding of an alternative had been dismissed again and again as impossible, for how could the ability of the Snidget to indicate who had caught it be replicated? Nowadays, who would dream of using anything as unreliable, even at the most minor levels of the sport?

The same, therefore, for our relations with muggles. Our society stood blinded by the _status quo_, however flawed, and the few examples of my muggle-integrated friends from the ISIST were far too eccentric to have any real weight. What was needed was someone respectable, someone from a well-placed, pure-blood family, to demonstrate a legal yet magical existence among muggles – and I was nothing loath to volunteer myself.

This may sound like hasty self-interest, but on the contrary, I gave the matter deep and considerable thought. Would I disgrace our noble and most ancient name? Indeed no, for that was the whole point of my theory. I was not suggesting boundless openness between muggle and magical, merely a thoughtful integration. And so my own trial of it must be even more thoughtful, careful, restrained. Assured on that point, I began to plan.

The key element was that I must live actually _with_ the muggles, not merely as a neighbour. This could have been most simply achieved by finding a position as a boarder – but I was not unobservant of the fact that those muggles who take in boarders are generally from the lower strata of their society. I, a well-bred witch, did not wish to sink to such levels. Besides, as a boarder, I should be the one to be the subject of observation, constantly having to watch myself against a barrage of ill-bred curiosity. No, I required some place in which I could observe, while unobserved. Given the way that we do not notice our house-elves, it seemed obvious that the equivalent position in a muggle household was what I was looking for.

Honesty compelled me to admit that I was too old to pass for a house-maid, the direct substitute of an elf, unless I wished to spend hours troubling with physical transfigurations and anti-aging potions. Neither was I merely seeking to prove my theory, or satisfy my curiosity. Since I would be, effectively, using my chosen muggle household as guinea pigs, it seemed only fair that I should endeavour to do them some genuine good with my magic in return for their unknowing assistance. In the position of a house-maid, such opportunities would be limited.

Perhaps I would be better employed as a cook? A well regulated kitchen is, after all, the principle key to domestic harmony, but I had hoped to do more for the muggles than improve their digestion, and to learn more than a selection of new recipes. In the sphere of domestic service suited to my age, there seemed to remain only the position of Housekeeper, yet I feared I would not know enough of muggle ways to successfully fulfil that post.

It was a chance sentence in my wider reading of any muggle books I could lay my hands on that solved this impasse. In a frothy romantic novel (did I not need to know how the entire of muggle society worked in order to live in it?) the cook remarked derisively of the governess: _'Neither drawing room nor kitchen, if you get what I mean.'_

I did! To belong to the household, and yet be apart from them. To be expected to mingle neither with the other staff, nor the family themselves. To have a position of significance, influence and importance, without having to manage other servants. And as an added bonus, to spend one's working hours among children, who are generally far more credulous and less hostile to eccentricity than their elders. That should be my line of service!

The only minor question was whether I should aim for the post of a governess, or that of a nanny. The advantages and disadvantages of both were considerable; in the end I decided that I would just have to take whatever position first opened, conditional on all other aspects being favourable. I did lean slightly towards the idea of a nanny, so long as very small babies were not involved, as I doubted my NEWTs in Transfiguration, Charms and such forth would be of much relevance if it came to teaching algebra or latin.

My next move, therefore, lay in the 'Situations Vacant' section of a muggle newspaper. I expanded my eccentricity to include a daily subscription to 'The Times' and 'The Telegraph', whose picturesque names appealed to me, and dedicated the waiting days to detailed observations and the consideration of names. Leaving aside any issue of anonymity, my own name was patently unsuitable for living as a muggle among muggles. Whether I was to be Miss Such-and-such the governess or Nanny Dear, I required a simple, respectable, perfectly acceptable name. And yet I did not want to sink to joining the soulless masses of Smith or Jones. The matter absorbed me, and I must have been taken for a muggle eccentric in various public libraries, poring over old newspapers, the telephone directory and Burke's Peerage, before I finally settled on the idea of retaining something of myself by using my own initials. 'M' – what could be a more normal muggle name than Mary? 'P' – well, Poppins was my own invention, but based on research it seemed passable, combining practicality for pronunciation by small children with a degree of distinction.

Such a recital of the logical steps I took in my preparations may, I fear, seem somewhat pedantic. But it seems important to me that you should understand, appreciate the full grounding behind the events I am about to relate. Furthermore, to omit my reasoning would be to pass over the months of thought and consideration it took, and so give an incomplete picture. Introductions are, after all, to introduce and set the scene. And finally, in perusing these pages I must ask you to remember that both I and my accustomed style of dictation are much older than you, who belong to the generations which have grown up under the shadow of the two Great British Wizarding Wars, now so happily ended. The events which I recount happened in an era many people would now call long ago, in the days of your great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, or even great-great-great-grandparents if you are younger.

But that is enough of introductions. I must now bend my memory to the recalling of the exact events of what I have always thought of as my Great Adventure.


	2. Chapter 1: In which I arrive

**Chapter 1: In which I arrive **

My Great Adventure truly began over afternoon tea in Harrods. Such a outing into the muggle world, always a delight to me, had become a regular weekly part of my preparations for venturing into _terra nova_. I needed to know exactly how real, well-to-do muggles talked, walked, drank their afternoon tea and did their shopping. In actual fact, they seemed to differ little from the social circles my mother moved in, apart from the precise details of what they bought and what they talked about. Well-to-do witches discussed the difficulty of finding reliable house-elves; muggles discussed house-maids. This did not vary, no matter which of the big department stores or hotels I went to, for I went methodically to all of them in turn.

But that day, I was back at Harrods, in Knightsbridge. I realise it is the fashion now for young witches and wizards to be acquainted with the geography of muggle London, but for those who are not, Knightsbridge is the next place you come to if you are travelling to the Ministry by muggle Underground and miss your station. It was one of my favourites, and I can still recall the exact flavour of the Darjeeling (perfectly piping hot) and the toasted teacake (slightly over-buttered) as I considered the company around me and decided that in lieu of any interesting fellow clients to observe, I would take the _Evening Standard._

It may be different now, but ladies in those days read the newspapers in a different way to gentlemen. A gentleman took a broadsheet, flapped it out somewhat loudly and vanished behind it into the financial sections. A lady, on the other hand, studied the front page carefully, paying particular attention to the jeweller's advertisement which always featured in the bottom right hand corner. Next, she turned as quietly as possible to the Society pages, where she began with the list of _Royal Engagements_. If the lady was grey-haired, she then moved on to the _'Births, Marriages and Deaths,'_ while those who were not moved to the fashion and gossip columns. Then, and only then, was a lady free to read whatever page she liked.

I observed the formalities: considered the string of pearls and accompanying Bond Street address with due care; next, still then being possessed of the jet-black hair characteristic of our family, scanned the doings of the Bright Young Things of muggle London; raised one eyebrow in the proper discrete way over the latest absurdities being paraded as hats; and finally, with no particular expectations, turned to the '_Advertisements_.'

And there it was; a most unusual advertisement:

_ Jane, Michael, John and Barbara Banks (to say nothing of their mother) require the best possible nanny at the lowest possible wage, __and at once. Apply to: __Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane. _

Even now, the memory of those simple words fills me with the sense of bewildered astonishment with which I sat, stunned, for a moment. I had not been expecting such a thing in the least, certainly not in the pages of the _Evening Standard._ Most situations vacant were listed in the morning papers. As I learned afterwards, this one had been intended for the _Morning Chronicle, _but Mrs Banks was not the sort of person to be even remotely capable of getting a notice sent out to a paper in time for printing.

But there it was. _'The best possible nanny at the lowest possible wage, and at once.' _I caught myself glancing almost furtively round at my fellow tea-drinkers, lest they too were planning to take advantage of this world-shaking vacancy – but that was nonsense! Ladies who took tea in Harrods did not go 'into service' as nannies. As you can see now, as I acknowledged wryly to myself then, I was eccentric in any world.

But since I was so, I put my hand to the broom! I folded the paper and drained my tea with almost unseemly haste, for fear some incompetent muggle nanny in some grubby little 'rooms' might also be reading the _Evening Standard, _ and promptly repairing to Number 17, Cherry Tree Lane. Or maybe many of them. I am sure it seems absurd in retrospect, but I had definite visions of arriving to find whole queues of nannies, winding all the way down the Lane and holding up the traffic. Yes, you smile; and I did too a moment later, although mine was somewhat of the mocking smile with which my mother had been used to greet my early eccentricities. A respectable witch, she used to say, is never flustered or panicked. And here was I, less than five minutes into contemplating actual life among the muggles and I was already being as thoughtless and flustered and weak-minded as I had always been told muggles were.

No! I sat up a little straighter and reminded myself of the facts. The scheme to live among muggles was perfectly reasoned. It had simply advanced a stage towards its execution. Care, thought and restraint were still the watchwords. And so I paused, with a slight twinge of disappointment that the Old Family part of myself smiled at again, and considered. Would it be more proper to present myself in the morning? The "proper times" to do things were much more important in those days than they are today, even, as I knew, among the muggles. Not then for a person from a respectable family to take part in the new and foolish idea I read of in the muggle paper the other day, called "working breakfasts." How could you possibly concentrate on consuming sufficient nourishment for the day while paying appropriate attention to your work?

But that is beside the point. In those days, such things were as unknown in the muggle world as my hypotheses were in our own magical world, and it was about the demonstration of the latter which I was thinking then. I considered, unfolded the newspaper to reread the advertisement, and decided that at barely four o'clock, it would be perfectly possible to arrive that very day. Five minutes later, I was packing.

Lest you think, as my family would have done, that this was unseemly haste, I must explain that I been gathering all possible essentials for life as a nanny or governess from the moment I had settled on the plan. All that remained at that moment was to pack, although I will admit that for a few minutes I scuttled upstairs, downstairs and through Rowena's chamber like the veriest of house-elves, collecting my worldly goods and pausing briefly at the bookshelf to consult the book of muggle nursery rhymes for the non-magical equivalent of the saying. 'My Lady's chamber,' it transpired. Muggles, however much one may be fond of them, are occasionally disappointingly lacking in imagination.

It had taken considerable quantities of imagination on my part to obtain the receptacle into which I was then packing. Using my cedarwood chest with the five compartments and our family's crest engraved upon it was, of course, sadly out of the question. Muggles in those days, as far as I had been able to observe, travelled with floppy things called Glad-Stone bags. As they were made of leather I still remain unsure where the 'stone' part comes from, unless it was for the want of a lightening charm that seems to have caused muggles to abandon using them entirely and shift to boxes on wheels. But, I had assumed in my ignorance, surely the same charms as for a trunk could be applied to a bag. Many consequent enquiries had merely determined that we wizards did not have such things, and that all trunk makers were born with the ability to raise their eyebrows to ridiculous heights.

Finally, only a week before that all-important afternoon tea in Harrods, I had grown desperate, and had ventured down Knockturn Alley to Bashir's the Oriental Carpet Importers (who also, or so it seemed, had imported every flea from the Orient as well). In some muggle books, they travelled with 'Carpet bags'. Perhaps-? I never actually finished my question in Bashir's. No sooner had I mentioned carpet bags than the young wizard in there had uttered a sort of eager whoop and rushed to one of their rug-covered tables. From under the rugs came more bags than I had ever dreamed of. Did I want one with fire-proofing charms? Did I want one with multiple undetectably expanding compartments? Did I want one charmed to carry extra heavy loads? "Over a tonne; with ease!" Did I want one with a Banshee wail intruder alarm? "Repels anyone!" Or a biting charm? "Mastiff grade!" Or to order one made of Flying Carpet that would be self-levitating and capable of independent thought and transport?

"Do you sell many of these?" I enquired, still a little overwhelmed by the variety and exuberance, once I had persuaded him I wanted a plain bag, not even with the "nice pink tartan lining" he went and dug out especially for me.

The young wizard shook his head thoughtfully. "Not to ladies. Mostly to smugglers and burglars."

I have often wondered over the years if I should have reported that conversation to the Magical Law Enforcement Patrol. But this was Knockturn Alley, and if the Patrol did not already have their eye on a shop with half a dozen pictures of different dragon breeds in the window beneath a parchment marked "INKWIRE WYTHIN", it was not for me to teach them their business. Besides, and more significantly at the time, I had no wish to be dismissed as "the nanny embroiled in a police case over her luggage." Muggles, I knew, had a horror of publicity for their domestic staff, and I had quite enough worries after the visit to Bashir's that I might be dismissed as "the nanny with the giant Oriental fleas."

Leaving vermin aside, I was fairly, and correctly as it turned out, certain that my attire would give no cause for concern to my prospective employers. On this point I had been particularly careful, for I had seen far too many respectable witches and wizards make a spectacle of themselves with mismatched muggle garments selected at random from muggle shops and traders. These days, now that codes of dress among the muggles are much more relaxed, the problem is perhaps a little less, although I would still question the combination of a poncho and kilt in which a well-known Quidditch personality is in the habit of appearing in public in. At the time of my Great Adventure, dress was all important, and so I had invested in several copies of muggle ladies fashion magazines and descended on Twilfitt &amp; Tatting's prepared for a fray.

Yet all had been surprisingly easy, for I had found an unexpected ally in their new apprentice, to whom I was somewhat scornfully transferred when I explained about wanting a muggle outfit. Young Miss Malkin had considered copying muggle clothes to be an exciting challenge, and took up replicating new garments from my brief sketches and descriptions with an enthusiasm and dedication that has stood her well in later life and business. In the time I would have expected to wait for a set of velvet dress robes, Miss Malkin had made an entire wardrobe of navy blue shirt-waists, which combined smartness with practicality. Coat, hat, gloves and muffler completed the picture, and of course, my umbrella.

My umbrella was entirely my own creation. Even today, an English muggle from the respectable classes is never seen without their umbrella; hence neither was I. But mine was not a plain muggle umbrella. One of the major problems I had noted travelling about within the muggle world was how inconvenient our modes of short-distant transport were for integrating unnoticed. Apparation requires privacy or you will give muggles heart-attacks; but respectable people did not normally loiter down the grimy back alleys usually suggested for private apparating spots. (Perhaps the sort of people one _does_ meet down grimy back alleys are one of the sources of the erroneous idea far too many of my relatives had, that muggles are foul, unwashed animals.) Broomsticks were just too obvious, hippogriffs too bulky, while thestrals had the even greater drawback of being invisible to many of our own people as well. It had proved extremely embarrassing to end an ISIST meeting with half your companions tripping over your mount tethered outside.

Thus I had found my first practical opportunity for applying "thoughtful integration" – of the twigs and handle of an old broomstick into a large muggle umbrella. The results had, in one way, been most satisfactory: a discrete low-level flying device which no muggle would ever notice, even when one was using it. Unfortunately, the only umbrella I had been able to obtain had been _"Secon' 'and, __but good as noo,__"_ from old Gumblebert Fletcher the pedlar. While there was nothing at all wrong with the fabric end, the wooden parrot's head handle was by no means good. It spoke when it was not spoken to, rolled its eyes when muggles were looking at it, and had an extremely common vocabulary and sense of humour. With hindsight, taking it with me was probably a major risk to the International Statute of Secrecy, but at the time, all I was really considering was getting to Cherry Tree Lane before it was too late. And I will admit that it was with a slight sense of excitement that I stepped onto my doorstep on that blustery autumn evening, unfurled said umbrella and took flight into the muggle world.

Some events in one's life, however trivial, are engraved as permanently and completely upon the memory as if entrusted to a Pensieve. Of such quality is that long ago journey to Cherry Tree Lane. First to the right, second to the left, sharp right again … Cherry Tree Lane has long since been rebuilt, the houses I knew replaced by the muggle tower buildings they with amusing absurdity call 'Flats'. But in my mind's eye, I can see each one of them as they were that day, as I flew past at pavement skimming level. It was generally my custom to fly a little higher than most muggles raise their eyes to from their purely earth-bound concerns, but with the wind seeming to come straight from Durmstrang, making me incidentally wish a conventional muggle nanny's attire included my sealskin cloak, I was taking no risks of being blown over my destination. And so I looked at each one of the first sixteen houses in Cherry Tree Lane: the big, the small, the neat, the too neat, and the rather startling one resembling a ship complete with cannon and telescope. I have often wondered since if old Admiral Boom, to whom the house belonged, was in fact no more muggle than I, but a retired captain from the Marie Celeste or the Flying Dutchman or any other of the magical shipping fleet which the muggles so mistakenly call "ghost ships." But a nanny does not speak to an Admiral, and so I never found out.

Perhaps being blown over my destination sounds an exaggeration, but that day, I must assure you, it was a very real possibility. The wind, or the parrot, seemed to wish me to travel in wild hops, and as I counted the sixteenth house and peered forwards into the gathering evening dusk, the wind quite suddenly lifted umbrella and passenger and flung them into the front gate of Number 17, Cherry Tree Lane with a bang that makes my bones ache yet. I only hoped that no-one inside the house had been looking out, for first impressions are important. Walking smack into the front gate would rather have given the impression I had come straight from an afternoon at the Leaky Cauldron or such like, not Harrods.

My own first impression of my new abode was that it was a small house, the smallest in the road. It had once been sweetly pretty, but was now a little dilapidated and needed a new coat of paint. So did the gate, I noticed, as I struggled slightly in the wind and half light to open the bolt, which needed a little oil. In fact, the entire place could have been summed up as needing a little something, and I will admit now, although I did not to myself then, that my heart sank just the least. Perhaps it was this which the parrot detected, for it seemed to decide to take no nonsense. I was blown smartly from the gate to the front door with an even louder bang!

I am sure now it was not long that I stood there, bag in one hand, hat clutched on with the other and parrot suppressed under one arm. At the time it seemed like forever before, below the rumpus of the wind, I faintly heard somewhat heavy and solid footsteps approaching. Plenty of time to have misgivings, starting with what the muggles might think when I had almost blown their front door in. And did I look like the best possible nanny, after that wild flight? And would they be the respectable type of muggles, given the un-oiled front gate? And was the unpleasantly heavy plod-plod-plod nearing the door really a muggle, and not a small troll?

They seem trivial anxieties when repeated, but seem far more pressing when one was actually standing on the muggle doorstep itself. Fortunately, at this point the front door was jerked open to reveal, Merlin be thanked, nothing more terrible than a somewhat heavy and solid housemaid. Never will I forget her greeting:

"Oh," she said blankly. "Yes mum?"

That is the difficult thing about muggle servants: one must constantly remember they are NOT house-elves, and cannot therefore be given a smart slap on the ear for impolite behaviour. I do not recall exactly what I did say, only that she clumped off down the hall, opened a door and announced loudly: "A leddy, mum. About the children." Without further ado she clumped back. "Second door on your right, mum."

Mrs Banks, on introduction, was exactly like her house. She was small, had once been sweetly pretty, and needed a new coat of paint. In character, she resembled the most vacant of Hufflepuffs, the type who are Sorted there as a charitable gesture for the rest of the House to be kind to, rather than possessing any of the endurance, tenacity or inclusiveness which should characterise Hufflepuffs. If she had a capacity for reasoned thought, it appeared to have left with the previous nanny. Even at the time, I could scarcely have described that first conversation, for we wandered uncertainly in a muddle of the advertisement, and the lowest possible wages and the unexpected departure of Katie Nanna "without a word of warning!" Finally, and again without a word of warning, it occurred to Mrs Banks that I might like to see the nursery and my future charges.

"You'll find that they are very nice children," she said, somewhat uncertainly, as she led the way out into the hall. "And that they give no trouble at all."

I favoured her with a haughty sniff. Firstly, she was saying it as if she didn't really believe it herself. Secondly, I had heard such phrases before: they were a point of distinct similarity between her world and ours. In wizarding circles, such things were usually said by the hostess at the sort of social functions where conversation was being periodically interrupted by the sound of the children murdering the kneazle or throwing the nursery house-elf downstairs.

A further thought suddenly seemed to strike my future employer. "Now, about references–"

I stopped. Assuredly, I had references: a most comprehensive set which would have admitted me to any sphere of employment within the magical world, on a far higher standing than that of a domestic servant. When a Hogwarts Professor, a Ministry Undersecretary, a Senior Healer and a Holder of the Order of Merlin, Second Class all attest to the quality of your person, there is little more to be said. And I was prepared to give them to her – whilst mildly confunding her to believe that she had recognised the names. It is, after all, a harmless subterfuge still practised to the current day by the Hogwarts staff on muggle parents and guardians who are unhappy about their children being magical. But that would involve magic. Since my very presence there was to test whether magic and muggle could co-exist without endless memory charms, I wished to see if such a situation could be avoided.

Therefore, I gave her a firm look. "Oh, I make it a rule never to give references."

Perhaps, with hindsight, it was unkind to use reason rather than magic, for Mrs Banks stared at me with one of the most bewildered expressions I have ever seen. "But I thought it was usual," she said, blinking like a rabbit. "I understood people always did."

If she had shown any sign of understanding _why _people always did, I would probably have given in and proceeded to confund her, but it was quite patently obvious that she was merely following mindless convention. I will confess that that was almost more irritating than the momentary hindrance to my employment.

"A very old-fashioned idea to _my_ mind," I retorted with stern disapproval. "_Very_ old-fashioned. _Quite_ out of date, as you might say," I added, remembering the proper muggle phrase.

The desperately up-to-date creature before me flushed at the very idea. "Very well, then," she said quickly. "We won't bother about them. I only asked, of course, in case _you – _er – required it. The nursery is upstairs–" And she led the way across the hall towards the staircase in a torrent of embarrassment-covering small talk.

From a position of mature reflection, I admit that I cannot explain nor excuse the incident which followed. Perhaps one might attribute it to slight elation on my part at overcoming the problem of references without recourse to magic. Perhaps on a momentary impulse I thought to test exactly how much Mrs Banks did not notice, before we progressed as far as the nursery. Perhaps I was slightly irritated that she had failed to call anyone to carry my bag up. Perhaps it was really an idea of the parrot's. But the fact remains: I cannot explain why, as Mrs Banks started up the stairs still anxiously chattering, I seated myself comfortably side-saddle on the bannisters and, bag and umbrella in hand, slid gently up after her.

It is a simple enough charm, although one that is apparently out of vogue with the current younger generation. Certainly, a brief enquiry among the youngest of my relatives revealed that no-one, these days, slides up the bannister of the marble staircase at Hogwarts, and Slytherin House no longer zealously defends its record in the end-of-year competition of having a relay team that managed to slide up and down the bannisters of seventeen consecutive staircases before the Professors caught them.

Mrs Banks, of course, noticed nothing. She gave a sigh of relief as we both arrived at the landing: "Well, all that's settled then."

I regret to say I was obliged, in a rather ill-bred fashion, to take out my handkerchief, which was fortunately one of the large red and white muggle bandanna ones, in order to hide my expression. "Quite," I agreed as soon as I was able to sound sufficiently haughty. "As long as _I'm_ satisfied." At that very moment, it was not so much satisfaction in my future charges which concerned me, as the fact that two of them were standing, eyes popping like nifflers from a hole, in the nursery doorway. In exactly the right position to have seen me ascend the bannister.

Fortunately, I was saved from any comment which may have been brewing in the children, the potential effects of which I shudder now to imagine, by Mrs Banks. With another startled blink, her self-satisfied reverie vanished and she rushed forwards to take note of her offspring. "Why, children! What are you doing there?" The air of trying to seem at home and in charge when she usually wasn't was palpable. "This is your new nurse, Mary Poppins. Jane, Michael, say how do you do! And these-" she waved her hand at two cots on the far side of the nursery "-are the Twins."

Jane … Michael … John … Barbara … to say nothing of their mother. I looked at them, one to the next, very carefully. A little girl of almost six, a little boy of four or five, two cots enclosing the sounds of two 'under-one's, and a funny little muggle of a mother. They did not look very much like a dream come true, or even very promising material for an important experiment of radical muggle/magical relations. Then, in an absurd coincidence that makes me smile even yet, the little boy before me broke the silence, with the very question I had been pondering.

"Will we do?"

"Michael!" cried his mother in horror. "Don't be naughty!"

Perhaps it was a very minor thing on which to base a decision, but right then it seemed a veritable sign of Divination. They would do! Oh, how wonderfully they would do! If it was not quite the most perfect muggle household ever, then, after all, a slightly eccentric nanny might pass safely unnoticed. And, although I admit that this was an even more emotional point, they seemed so drearily in need of a little of the life and laughter which went out of the muggle world when we withdrew our magic from them in 1697. I am sure it was this loss of a leavening touch which led to their steely 'scientific' Industrial Revolution, that has peopled the muggle world with iron monsters and misery – but such historical considerations are quite beside the point. The important thing for these memoirs was that I gave a long loud sniff of disapproval at everything from muggle history to Mrs Bank's ill-placed attempts at discipline, and drew myself up. "I'll take the position."

With what I remember as barely decent haste, Mrs Banks excused herself in less than a couple of minutes and her silly little footsteps tottered away downstairs. I stood still, and carefully surveyed my new domain, with its strange smell of polish and Pears' soap that pervades muggle dwellings, and my new charges.

The two children stared back, and then edged towards me. I regret to say they did _not_ smell of Pears' soap; a distinct essence of steamed jam pudding was about them, especially on the boy – Michael's – mouth.

"How did you come?" the girl – Jane – asked. "It looked just as if the wind blew you here."

You might expect that I would have been alarmed, at one part of our own magical world being so early detected and commented on. But the important principle for all witches and wizards to remember is that if a muggle has managed to think of an excuse for something magical they have seen, no matter how foolish or illogical, let them think it. They are quite happy. Moreover, children are quite credulous, and also tend to push aside memories that do not make sense according to muggle logic as "childish imagination" when they grow older.

Therefore, I looked calmly down at Jane. "It did," I said briefly, and stepped round her to hang my hat, muffler and coat on the bedpost. A well-bred witch is, after all, never ruffled. Admittedly, a well-bred witch should never have been so untidy either, but as Mrs Banks had not troubled to show me around the nursery and I could not see the coat-hooks, the bedpost seemed more appropriate for the circumstances than Vanishing them.

By hand not magic was also necessary for my unpacking, for the two children stood by as painfully earnest observers. As I bent down to undo my bag, Michael, whose eyes were practically popping by this point, could restrain himself no longer. "What a funny bag!" he said, pinching it with his fingers.

Curiosity, as we used to say in Slytherin, killed the Gryffindor, but at that particular moment I was only glad I had not chosen the option of a mastiff grade biting charm.

"Carpet," I said shortly, putting the key into the eminently normal lock. It was not a funny bag. It was a muggle bag.

"To carry carpets in, you mean?"

One could probably have fitted any number of carpets in it, given the size of the interior expanding charm, but as you can appreciate, the inquisition was starting to get both tiresome and a little too close to magic. I gave him another haughty look, and, as is best with muggles, stuck to plain facts: "No. Made of."

"Oh," he said, and stepped back slightly. "I see."

On the contrary, he meant he wanted to, for as I lifted the flap, both children stepped forwards again, and peered in. "Why!" Jane cried. "There's nothing in it!"

I can see now that they were merely two surprised, ignorant and childish little muggles, who meant nothing by what they said, but at the time I drew myself up indignantly. I might have had an Oriental carpet bag instead of a proper hardwood trunk, but I was certainly not standing for insinuations that I might be the sort of person to travel without proper luggage! "What do you mean – nothing? Nothing in it, did you say?"

I bent down, took out and shook out my large starched white apron with a brisk snap, and donned it immediately. Under any circumstances, there is nothing like the semblence of a uniform for imparting authority and putting paid to impertinent questions. Silence, at least in terms of sensibly audible comments addressed to myself, promptly reigned. In peace, therefore, I unpacked the selection of goods I felt it reasonable to assume a muggle would have been able carry, such as a large cake of Sunlight soap, a toothbrush, a packet of hairpins, a bottle of scent, a small folding armchair (the sort enchanted to fit the person sitting in it) and a box of Honeydukes Finest honey-and-lemon throat lozenges.

By this point the children had recovered enough to be whispering to each other. A particularly loud _"...__nothing!" _ caused me to look up, and note somewhat to my horror the clock on the mantelpiece showing the time to be exactly an hour after that which Mrs Banks had mentioned as the normal bedtime. She had made some sort of excuse about having to wait for the housemaid and cook to have time to supervise baths, with no nanny – but I really did not see why that had kept the children up. If the nursery house-elf had fallen ill or otherwise out-of-service, most witches I knew would have put the children to bed themselves – but let us be charitable. Some of the witches I knew would, in such circumstances, have decapitated the sick house-elf on the spot and kept the children up until a replacement elf had arrived by return owl-post. It was comforting to think that in a muggle household I was not likely to meet the preserved head of 'Katie Nana' hanging sadly on the back stairs.

But, late on my first night?! In retrospect, it seems an overly-trivial point to have worried over, especially as Mrs Banks' own time-keeping left a great deal to be desired, but I wished to be above error. Therefore, remnants of jam pudding or not, it was patently bed-time and patently not bath-time. I reached back into the bag. Although, like bannister-sliding relays and anti-muggle sentiments, they are long since considered out-dated in this modern post-war world, I still abide as I did then in the firm belief in bed-time tonic potions. You may also note here that the International Statute of Secrecy has a major, though then advantageous, loophole which completely fails to mention, let alone regulate, the administration of completed potions to muggles. You may give them the Draught of Living Death and the Ministry cannot stop you; but allow a muggle to glimpse you scrubbing out the cauldron afterwards and it may be Azkaban for several months.

Such absurdities of our world aside, I drew out a spoon, napkin and plain bottle of potion, its normal label especially charmed to read _'__One tea-spoon to be taken at bed-time.'_

Michael sidled even closer. "Is that your medicine?"

"No," I said bluntly. "Yours."

You would not believe the fuss that was made about an ordinary bed-time tonic potion! Michael refused to take his until fixed with a very firm stare; Jane took hers without complaint but protested it would be bad for the twins; and all of them got totally over-excited by the changing flavours and demanded second helpings! At the end of it all, I took a dose myself. There are times when a small stimulant (rum punch) is entirely necessary. Then, with a gesture I had noted among the children's nurses out and about in London, I smoothed down the front of my apron. "Now, spit-spot into bed!"

The younger generation such as yourselves is, no doubt, well aware nowadays of the superb response of muggle clothes to simple unfastening charms compared to that of ordinary robes, but at the time I will admit I was a trifle surprised. People had always been so eager to say how complicated and arduous muggle life was, but in less than a minute, the children were in bed and the night light on dim.

Peace and quiet I thus had to finish my unpacking, but not privacy. From the fields of memory stare back those two pairs of round, almost popping eyes peering over their blankets. It was all such simple stuff, by any world's standards: seven flannel nightgowns; four cotton ones; a pair of boots; a set of muggle dominoes (I had not dared bring the ordinary self-balancing kind); two bathing-caps; and a book that looked like a postcard album. What was so intriguing about all these I am still unsure. Admittedly, the book was not a postcard album, but Dilys Derwent's _'__Charms and Cures for __Child__hood__ Problems.' _I had felt it would be reassuring to have this to hand, but with the pair of staring monkeys, I was only too thankful for the two shillings and sixpence I had invested in muggle postcards of Bournemouth and Torquay to disguise it. The bathing-caps were not quite what they appeared either, being a French model I had bought at a Parisian ISIST meeting, which not only washed one's hair like normal caps, but also dried and set it.

I remember the postcard album particularly, because it was at that point I realised that as long as I was in view, the children were not going to go to sleep. Furthermore, it was quite clear that if I were to remove myself from the scene, perhaps retiring to the kitchen for a cup of tea in the proper manner of muggle nurses, the children would instantly sit up to whisper. That, as far as I could see, left only one solution. With the hope that this was still within the range of what a muggle might legitimately carry in a Glad-stone bag, I pulled out the folding camp-bedstead. If I must be present and yet not visible, the best thing seemed to me to have a quiet rest for an hour, and then place a slumbering charm on the hopefully then sleeping children while I finished getting the nursery in order.

I flipped open the bed-stead, thankful that I made it up with blankets and eiderdown before packing, and, as real muggle nannies do not have screening charms, vanished neatly under a large flannel nightgown. My assumptions were instantly proved correct. The moment I was out of sight, Michael's voice rose.

"Mary Poppins!" he cried in an anxious tone, "you'll never leave us, will you? You won't leave us, will you?"

I confess it was with not much restraint and a fair degree of irritation that I popped my head out of the top of the nightgown. "One more noise from that direction and I'll call the Policeman!"

At this point I heard myself, and caught my breath. Would it work? Were muggle children as in awe of the strange hatted, blue-coated administers of muggle law and order as I and my brothers had once been of the red-robed Aurors my mother had used to threaten to summon, when our nursery house-elf had failed to keep our hubbub to appropriate hours and levels?

Perhaps it is not so now, but then, apparently, they were. Michael subsided meekly. "I was only saying," he began, "that we hoped you wouldn't be going away soon-"

I gave both he and Jane a fierce, quelling glare in silence – and then recovered my poise with a haughty sniff. "I'll stay till the wind changes," I said shortly, and blew out the candle to cut off any further conversation.

There were many things I could have meant by that: the steady good fortune I had had so far in passing as a muggle; a change in this household; or a change in magical attitudes towards muggles. But such enigmatic ideas were not, as far as I can recall, in my mind at that moment. I meant exactly what I said – it is always the best approach with muggles. I had come there from a chance decision to read the newspaper at tea; I had chosen to stay on a whim of coincidence; so I measured the length of my sojourn by the span of the east wind. It seemed to suit Michael, who sank under his blankets muttering something which sounded like "That's all right."

And so, that is how I arrived at Number 17, Cherry Tree Lane. I trust that I managed to 'give satisfaction', as the phrase was then, and that they did not spend too many times wishing for the days when Katie Nana's disorder had ruled the household. But I think not. Certainly Mr Banks was glad, as he told his wife loudly at breakfast the very morning after my arrival, that I had come by myself and not held up the traffic and obliged him to have to tip the policeman. My large handkerchief and haughty sniff were obliged to reappear at that moment, as I pictured exactly what effect I might have had on the traffic and the policeman! Mrs Banks too, seemed satisfied in being able to tell all her society friends and acquaintances that _her_ children's nurse was so up-to-date she didn't believe in giving references. Below stairs, Mrs Brill the cook and Ellen the troll-like house-maid relapsed contentedly back into drinking endless cups of tea undisturbed by the need to supervise nursery suppers, while the fact that I kept my own boots polished myself (polishing charms exceed any boot polish, magical or muggle) seemed to sleepily please the somnolent creature called Robertson Aye who was apparently employed to sleep under the stairs and do nothing.

Thus, for the ordinary days. For the extraordinary days, I must leave you to judge for yourself.


	3. Chapter 2: In which I have a Day Out

**Chapter 2: In Which I Have a Day Out **

"Every third Thursday," said Mrs Banks. "Two 'til five." I can see her still, as though she stood before me now. Her ridiculously innocent brown eyes gazed anxiously up at me in a vain attempt at firmness, for all the world most resembling a small child trying to make a large Abraxan reverse. I should, I suppose, have been more sympathetic. After all, she was young and it was not her fault that she was only a muggle, nor that she had acquired four children under the age of seven when she had only been expecting three. But such considerations did not change the fact that much as I had enjoyed my first two weeks of muggle life, I had no intention of being put upon beyond the line of duty. Every third Thursday! I have known people who gave more liberal terms to their house-elves!

And so I eyed her sternly. "The best people, ma'am, give every _second_ Thursday, and one till six. And those I shall take, or–"

Here I paused, which I hope you will understand was strictly according to the principles of my experiment and not simply a prelude to my confunding her. I had made a new discovery: well-to-do muggles lived in fear of their servants giving notice, and when a muggle servant said 'or-', they meant if they did not get what they wanted, they would give said notice. In the course of a mere fortnight I had observed 'Or-" to excuse Ellen the troll-like housemaid from daily high level dusting, to relieve Mrs Brill from the trouble of having to try a new soup recipe Mrs Banks had found in a fashionable magazine, and most drastically of all, to cause the Right Honourable Mrs Langdale (the pinnacle of Mrs Banks' social circle), to change the usually sacrosanct date of a dinner party. In the latter case, as far as I can recall, the butler was going to his niece's wedding that day, 'Or-'

You can therefore see I was both wise and justified in pausing. While it is entirely natural for us to use magic for every little thing, with muggles a gentler approach was, and still is, better. Such muggle difficulties are also a timely reminder to us to be thankful for the devotion of house-elves, even with these modern ideas of freedom and payment for them which are now coming in.

I am told that there are changes these days for muggles, too. Apparently, very few well-to-do households now keep any servants, who have been replaced by the 'Electric' which was only a very new-fangled idea at the time I write about. I cannot quite believe this myself, nor understand how it could possibly work out. People like Mrs Banks will not have changed, and how could any electric machine render her sufficiently organised or capable to attend to high level dusting or nursery suppers?

But such modern developments were still far in the future at the moment I am now recalling. Mrs Banks gave a small, hasty sigh, her posture drooping into one which could not have said more plainly that she wished she knew as much about the best people as I did. "Very well, very well," she conceded hurriedly, and I made her a small polite bow. It has been a puzzle to me ever since my Great Adventure how the Ministry of Magic has so much trouble liaising with muggles that they need to keep such hordes of Obliviators. Obviously, accidents will happen, but on a Ministry level, they are surely unnecessary. As I had demonstrated in that exchange, nothing more strenuous than a decisive manner and a firm stare were or are needed for most muggles to be entirely obliging, without any need for resorting to magic.

But at that particular moment, I was not concerned with theories of magical/muggle relations. The matter was settled, and it was my Afternoon Out. I went out into the hall and collected my hat and gloves. I had, you must understand, come downstairs already otherwise arrayed for the outing, so as to save time once my employer had conceded the point. It is also, in all spheres of life, often a great aid to achieving one's goals if you appear as though the matter were already settled. To take an example from our own world, it is the confident and assured members of the Wizengamot whose bills tend to carry quickly, without any need of such cheap measures as 'Donations' to the Minister's favourite causes.

Confidence, assurance, and discretion – those were the watchwords of my own adventure too; to which end, although as far as I can recall it was a fine if rather cold autumn day, I picked up my umbrella. To any outside observer, it would have appeared that I was merely properly equipped against any eventuality, or perhaps a little vain of my attire. The simple truth was that I dared not leave a talking parrot head umbrella behind. Merlin alone knows what it might have done or said in my absence! Hence, fully attired and equipped, I opened the front door and stepped out into my first Day Out.

Perhaps because of its novelty, that day, like the day of my arrival, has remained as a clear and permanent picture in my memory. Certainly, I recall all too clearly that I had stepped no further than the doormat before the nursery window opened directly above me.

"Where are you going?" said Jane's voice.

I am sure now that it was, like many others, a question of no more intent than childish curiosity, but at the time I felt a small rush of irritation that she, like her mother, should question my allotted hours of leisure. Therefore, I did not look up but replied crisply: "Kindly close that window."

My tone must have struck home, for the small head popped promptly back inside the window, although failing to close it. I paused for one moment. Mrs Brill or Ellen would, at some point, be sent up to visit the nursery in my absence – but it was unlikely to occur to them to close the window. The thought of returning at six to find the all the small items of the nursery blown hither and thither by this brisk east breeze did not appeal, and so, I trust you will understand with good reason, I adjusted the back buttons of my glove and in the same motion discretely drew my wand. To the heedless children in the nursery, the sudden slam of the window would have been attributable to the wind itself, if they indeed gave it that much thought at all. Then I hurried down the garden path and out of the gate.

Down Cherry Tree Lane, turn to the right, turn to the left. I took that particular route so many second Thursdays during my time in the Banks household I could probably even today retrace it blindfold. At the second corner, there was always a Policeman. Whatever the weather, he always tipped his hat and said it was a Nice Day. Whether he was speaking truthfully or not, I always nodded in reply, and discretely squeezed the parrot head of my umbrella a little tighter to prevent it passing any comment as well.

On that first afternoon out, the blustery wind was such that I was obliged to pause a little beyond the Policeman's corner, and set my hat and coat straight by the aid of a motor-car windscreen. Simply conjuring an appropriate mirror was, of course, completely out of the question. It took me a few moments to achieve satisfactory order, and in that time a mocking squawk sounded: "All dolled up-"

I think I have mentioned earlier in these pages that the parrot had low views and lower vocabulary.

I clamped it back more firmly under my arm. "I will _thank_ you," I said, taking a risk of addressing it out loud since I was in a street where I was not known, "to remember that it is proper to be seen and _not_ heard!" And with this ultimatum, we both went on in silence towards the crouching figure visible at the far end of the road, who was our ultimate destination.

Here, I realise, I must pause and introduce a friend. Though, as I explained earlier, I have sought throughout these pages to maintain the anonymity of all those who appear within them, in this particular case I may be at least partially open with you. Indeed, I fear the person in question would be disappointed if I were not, for Bert, more correctly named as Herbert Alfred, was not one who was in the least concerned about familial privacy. This was perfectly understandable, for unlike myself, with a noble and most ancient family name to preserve, Bert was at least partly muggle-born. Whether his long deceased father had been one of us or merely a muggle, Bert had not the least idea by the time he entered Hogwarts; he was, quite simply, of muggle name and muggle-raised.

As such, you will fully understand that the majority of Slytherin House was none too kindly disposed to him. Eccentricity is tolerable among those of good standing; outsiders are not. Yet Bert's years of education were, I believe, not a total trial to him, for he and I became in a discrete way, good friends; a friendship cemented by a mutual, almost insatiable curiosity about the world the other one came from. Though his enquiries were based on necessity, for entering our world, while mine were merely eccentric, I believe the resulting discussions were equally pleasurable to both of us. It was the years after Hogwarts which were not kind to Bert. His natural talents and ambitions, which the Sorting Hat had recognised to place him in our House, were for Art. But even within the upper circles of well-bred wizardry, magical Art is a very closed sphere. Without name or connections, there were few if any opportunities open to a muggle-born Slytherin. Sadly, even I could not help him, for my family's interests and influence lay within the spheres of genealogy and politics. Gradually, Bert slid back into the muggle world. But here, his magic told against him. There was no doubt that Bert's paintings moved.

While this would, indeed, have brought him great success and renown within the muggle art world whose dominant artistic aesthetic at the time sought to create the impression of movement, it did not attract the approval of the Ministry of Magic. Seven times did a task-force from the Ministry Special Sub-Committee on the Control and Dissemination of Magical Art (a little known but vigorous part of the Department for International Magical Cooperation) raid Bert's studio and exhibitions. His fines were considerable, but the final twig off the broomstick fell with a portrait entered in the muggle Royal Academy. It was ejected by the muggle authorities for _"__employing __apparently__ mechanical devices to make the subject raise its arm." _The news reached the Ministry via the muggle papers, and Bert spent the next two months in Azkaban.

After this dramatic double denouement, you will understand that Bert's ambitions were somewhat permanently crushed. Perhaps to spite the Ministry, on his release he accepted a post from a muggle charity which found work for ex-convicts, as a door-to-door salesman of 'Matches', those short breakable sticks which muggles use to conjure fire.

If the old tale that matches are in fact fragments of wands stolen from wizards by muggles still circulates in nurseries and the back corners of classrooms as it did in my young days, I must here insist that it is profoundly untrue. Matches are nothing more than short lengths of aspen wood, which as you might know is used only for toy broomsticks and such like, being unsuitable for wand making. These are dipped in some sort of potion which produces flame when struck on a rough surface. Muggles use them repeatedly each day and somehow persist in failing to believe in magic.

For his artistic self-expression, Bert channelled his talents into a side-line drawing pavement pictures in coloured chalks. As he explained to me, "No-one ever looks twice at them. They just glance down, throw a few coppers in me hat and walk on."

I realise that all this makes Bert sound a somewhat melancholy and disappointed figure, but in truth, he was one of the most cheerful people I ever knew. To the end of his days, Bert retained a brightness and cheeriness of outlook, even after Azkaban. Certainly, at the time I write of, he had encouraged my research adventure into the muggle world with the utmost enthusiasm and, on learning of my new address, had shifted his work to the area so that I should "not be without a familiar face, Mary P." My _nom de plume_, as you may see, amused him greatly.

It was, therefore, in response to this generousness of heart that I walked very quietly up the last section of the street towards Bert, on that long-ago first Day Out. I wished to surprise him, and also to observe exactly what he, as a well-experienced watcher of muggles, thought of my pose as a muggle. Bert, as I recall, was kneeling on the pavement adding a few finishing touches of chalk to a picture of two bananas, an apple and the head of a woman wearing a crown. He was, even with such disadvantageous materials, still a very quick artist. It was his boast that he could paint up one side of a street and down the other before you had had time to come round the corner, although looking back I rather suspect he must have resorted to magic and charmed Self-Drawing chalks in attempting the feat.

"Hey," I called softly. I quite concede that this was a most ill-bred form of greeting – but Bert had never been one for high formality. He was also, at that moment, deaf to the world in the absorbing application of brown lines to a banana and brown curls to the woman's head. On my second attempt, I remembered my family and my manners, and gave a lady-like cough.

"Ahem!"

If my memory does not play me false, he turned and positively started, and his voice still carries across the lapse of years. "Mary!" he cried in tones of utter, pleasurable surprise.

It is foolish to still feel the satisfaction this one word aroused, but it would be giving an incomplete account of matters if I did not admit to having looked down at my feet and rubbed the toe of one shoe along the pavement two or three times in order to conceal my unavoidable smile a trifle. That well-bred witches must never show their feelings by any means in any situation is a lesson I, in my eccentricity, have never fully mastered to this day.

"It's my Day, Bert," I said. "Didn't you remember?"

I meant it merely to rub in a little, in the way of friends, how he had not seen me coming, but as I can still all too clearly recall, Bert's face fell. "Of course I remembered, Mary, but–" He broke off sadly, and looked into his old cap lying on the pavement beside the last picture. There were exactly two muggle pennies in it. He picked it up and jingled the coins – a sad, pathetic little jingle I can hear yet.

I gave him a bright look, though the situation was too sad for a smile. "That all you got, Bert?"

"That's the lot," he said. "Business is bad today. You'd think anybody'd be glad to pay to see that, wouldn't you?" He nodded his head at the just finished picture and sighed deeply. "Well, that's how it is, Mary. Can't take you to tea to-day, I'm afraid."

Perhaps you are wondering why I, in possession of enough money, both magical and muggle, to have bought afternoon tea several times over in either world, was lamenting Bert's pennies, but I hope you will understand it was not the tea that mattered. When I had first propounded my idea of living among muggles, Bert, as I explained above, was an enthusiastic supporter. During my months of research and preparation, he had evolved an Idea: on my days off, or at least the first one, we should meet up and he would take me out, like any muggle nanny, to a real muggle tea-shop and have a real muggle Afternoon Tea, raspberry jam cakes and all.

Being an artist as he was, Bert's Ideas always tended to be so clearly visualised that their fulfilment was rather like living the moment over again. It was at the loss of this bright vision that I, too, started to sigh. Then I caught sight of the woman's face in the chalk picture. Bert explained afterwards that it was the 'spitting image' of Queen Elizabeth, but as far as my memory serves me, from the angle I was looking at it, it was a fairly 'spitting image' of my mother had she seen me sighing in a muggle street. _Well-bred witches... _it seemed to say; and out of sheer instinct I turned the corners of the sigh up into a smile instead. A Cheering charm could not have been brighter or more encouraging.

"That's all right, Bert. Don't you mind. I'd much rather not go to tea. A stodgy meal I call it – really."

Though I concede I am eccentric, I do feel such edicts about never showing emotion do lead to a lot of insincerity. Certainly, I felt then, and still do today, that it was a credit to Bert's friendship that he was not offended by such false cheeriness. In fact, in retrospect I think he may well have understood the indoctrinated habit which led to it, if not the actual trigger of the moment, for he took my hand and squeezed it in a sympathetic fashion.

"Come and have a look," he said firmly, and we walked hand-in-hand down the row of pictures. Most of them were fairly typical of Bert's work, and though I would have been happy to stop and look at the latest renditions – did not many famous muggle artists paint innumerable repetitions of similar scenes? – Bert seemed to have a particular objective in mind.

"There!" he said, coming to a halt and pointing rather proudly. "Now, _there's_ one you've never seen before!"

That time I did sigh in a muggle street – with appreciation. Bert had poured forth his entire artistic imagination, and the lower slopes of a snow-capped mountain were simply covered with roses, amongst which posed grasshoppers who, had it been oils, would surely have been moving. "Oh, Bert," I said without any falsely encouraging smiles, "that's a fair treat!"

I can still recall today the bright light which lit in his eyes at this, though he shook his head modestly and led me on to the next picture, which he introduced with nothing more than a small shrug. It needed nothing else – but I realise that does not make sense. Quite objectively, the next picture was of the country: all trees and grass, with a little wedge of blue sea in the distance and some muggle seaside resort 'amusements' in the background. Quite simply, it was a picture of the garden of the tea rooms in the New Forest where, in our far-off foolish youth, Bert had proposed to me on the spur of the moment. It had been an exciting day, for we had both just passed our Apparition tests, and for the first time had succeeded in synchronised long-distance Apparition, Hogwarts to Hampshire, which made it quite understandable for Bert to have got a bit carried away.

(In case you are curious to know, he apologised immediately, before I had a chance to say anything; and when I explained that I didn't want to get married, because getting married, even to a muggle-born, would be so boringly respectable and conventional and pleasing-to-my-family, he apologised some more; and we remained ever after what the celebrities in the Daily Prophet gossip columns so often say untruthfully, 'Just Good Friends.')

But the fact that it was not the site of anything romantic did not prevent me, even up to the present day, from having a certain fondness for the place. After all, there is only ever one place in which one is first proposed to. "My word!" I said, stepping back so I could see it better. "Why, Bert, whatever is the matter?"

I asked the question, but I knew it was rhetorical. Bert's face had taken on the expression which had only ever meant, even at school, that he had been seized with another Idea.

"Mary!" he cried excitedly, catching hold of my other hand as well. "I got an Idea! A real _Idea!"_

When one has friends who have Ideas, it is never kind to mention that one could see the Idea coming – it spoils the full enjoyment of them. So I waited for the particulars. That was always the – distinctive feature – of Bert's Ideas. They came on so suddenly one never knew quite what to expect. I confess, I had not anticipated the following:

"Why don't we go there – right now – this very day? Both together, into the picture. Eh, Mary?"

And before I had had time to protest about the inadvisability of sudden joint apparition from the middle of a muggle street, he had turned us on the spot and we were right out of the street, all street lamps and iron railings vanished, in a tea-room gardens which had changed so little it seemed as if we must be standing in the middle of the painting, or had stepped into a Memory. I wonder if it is still so today: the green-ness, the sense of sudden quiet away from the rumble of London traffic, the crisp grass and little flowers beneath one's feet. Bert, as I recall, had apparated us to under the trees, which caught rather on my hat as we bent and ducked out towards open space. I presume now it was due to this distraction of trying to hold my hat on that I failed to notice the rest of Bert's Idea being put into practice until we actually reached the lawn.

Then I stared at Bert. As far as I can recall, not only had various facial chalk smudges been left behind in London, but simply everything about his attire had changed, as if he had bought a new set of clothes. A bright green-and-red striped coat, white flannel trousers, a new straw hat – this was, I must hasten to explain, a rather flamboyant but still perfectly conventional outfit for a muggle gentlemen of the time. Being an artist, Bert's tastes were always towards the conspicuous and flamboyant.

Although it could possibly be construed as passing an ill-bred personal remark, in the situation and company I hope you will appreciate that I could not help commenting. "Why, Bert, you look fine!"

"Golly!" said Bert, after a moment's staring – and at this point I realised his tastes for the conspicuous and flamboyant had extended to myself too. My shoes had been Transfigured into an altogether grander pair, with diamond buckles. It was the diamond buckles that gave me a twinge of anxiety as I snatched out my wand and conjured a pocket mirror. There was no need to have to consult motor-car windscreens here, but I admit I was considerably concerned exactly what flights of fancy costume Bert's Idea might have come up with. But, artistic and muggle-born or not, I should have trusted him, for Bert had stuck strictly to 'conventional', if a little over-sophisticated for the situation, and not 'flamboyant.' My coat had changed to a silk dress cloak with watery patterns all over it, and the tickling sensation at the back of my neck turned out to be from a long, curling feather added to my existing hat. I was still wearing my gloves, now without the chalk marks Bert's hands had left, and carrying the umbrella. I can only presume, looking back, that Bert must have placed a silencing charm upon it, for the parrot passed no comment and merely rolled its eyes, in a way it normally did only when its beak was clamped forcibly shut.

"My Goodness," I said eventually, unable to think quite what else to say. "I _am_ having a Day Out!"

And as Bert beamed, we picked our way out from the very edge of the trees, towards the green metal tables on the lawn, laid out just as they had been in our Hogwarts days. As I recall, my first reaction was that of sudden anxiety, for there were no other visitors to be seen. For one awful moment, it looked as if Bert's Idea was doomed to failure and the tea-rooms were shut. But then I saw that on the central green table was an Afternoon Tea – and what an Afternoon Tea it was! A pile of raspberry jam cakes – and I do not exaggerate – as high as my waist filled the centre of the table. Tea was boiling in a big brass urn, and there were two plates of whelks and two pins to pick them out with.

There is, I believe, a room at Hogwarts which will supply whatever the occupant imagines, and it certainly seemed then as if we had walked into an equivalent. Raspberry jam cakes, of course, were my favourite; while the whelks were a particular weakness of Bert's, acquired from his muggle upbringing. It was, as I am sure you will appreciate, remarkably surprising.

"Strike me pink!" I said, taking the opportunity to use a new muggle phrase I had acquired from Mrs Brill the previous week.

"Golly!" Bert agreed, with somewhat of a mischievous grin.

Our spontaneous competition in muggle expletives was at that moment cut short, for a plummy voice inquired: "Won't you sit down, Moddom?"

I turned, with probably more haste than a well-bred witch should unless dealing with rampaging dragons, to find a tall man in a black coat coming out from under the opposite trees, with a table napkin over his arm. I confess, I sat with a distinct and surprised plop. It was not, so much, the arrival of a waiter, since there had, after all, been plenty of waiters during our much earlier visit. It was the arrival of _the_ waiter. His name had, even then, long departed my recollection, but his round, solemn face has remained with me to this day, ever since I first met him as Bert's Friend-From-Hufflepuff.

"I'm the Waiter, you know," he said solemnly.

Looking back, I can only attribute my inane reply to surprise, which is a very poor excuse for having stared at a waiter and then said: "Oh! But I didn't see you in the picture." Perhaps it was surprise at me which caused Bert to sit down somewhat heavily in the opposite chair. The Waiter, however, was not in the least ruffled.

"Ah, I was behind the tree," he said calmly.

"Won't you sit down?" I asked, rather desperately trying to recover the poise proper to my family, before my ancestors grew dizzy from turning in their graves.

The Waiter shook his head. "Waiters never sit down, Moddom."

I trust that this was a relative statement, and not some form of horrendous Standing Hex placed upon all waiters. At any rate, as far as I recall, he seemed fairly content with the situation, dusting the whelk pin and handing it to Bert with a flourish. "Your whelks, Mister! _And _your pin!"

Accordingly urged, we turned our attention to the Afternoon Tea.

I know such an meal has gone quite out of fashion now, among both wizards and muggles, but I do not believe that there can be much more pleasant in life than a leisurely Afternoon Tea. It may have grown golden with memory, but that afternoon certainly seemed one of the finest Teas I had ever had. No slopped tea or burnt cakes, and best of all, the gentle outdoor peace with no other chattering customers. I will admit, though I would also remind you that it was between two of us, that the plate of raspberry jam cakes was clear before Bert and I stood up and brushed our crumbs off.

"There is Nothing to Pay," said the Waiter, before either of us could have had time to ask for the bill. "It is a Pleasure."

I am sure you had seen this coming, and have been laughing under your cloak for some time; but at the time, I had not. One is apt to forget, even when they are your friends, that muggle-born Slytherins are as entitled and able to be cunning as those of us from better families. In the surprise of the moment, I do not know quite what I might have said to Bert, as the whole un-spontaneityof the afternoon, even of his two solitary coppers, dawned on my senses – but the Waiter saved us from anything which might have been regrettable.

"You will find the Merry-Go-Round," he said in the same calm tones so typical of his House at Hogwarts, "just over there."

It used to be said in certain (Gryffindor) circles that Hufflepuff House was founded for the benefit of Slytherins, lest we tear each other to pieces. Certainly, those ten words saved Bert and I from what I had heard Mrs Brill refer to as "a spat." By the time I looked at Bert, whatever I had been going to say about Ideas had been forgotten, and his own eyes were twinkling. The Merry-Go-Round!

I here see I have again failed to explain thoroughly. Although I had caused such consternation in my family at a young age, by insisting on riding a muggle donkey cart on Scarborough beach, until visiting that tea-rooms trip with Bert in our youth, I had never even been close to a Merry-Go-Round. That one was not only the first I had ridden on, but was also one of the first examples of the thoughtful integration of magic and muggle technology which my Great Adventure sought to prove. Not only did the carved wooden horses go round-and-round and up-and-down, in the closest thing muggles could conceive to a broomstick ride, but the entire Merry-Go-Round itself was connected by some form of Portkey to other Merry-Go-Rounds in other seaside locations. You paid your money, chose horse and destination, and rode forth.

I have since worried whenever I have read of muggle children going missing in seaside resorts that they may have inadvertently strayed onto such rides, to find themselves five minutes and tuppence later in a completely unknown destination at the opposite end of the country. But such things did not concern Bert and I at that moment, transported by the simple words 'Merry-Go-Round' to our carefree youth and the day I had ridden so many times I had come off dizzy. It had been while supporting my unsteady arm and steps that Bert had got carried away and proposed. I know some memory of that tinged my voice as I raised my eyebrows at his grin and asked: "Where shall we go?"

Before you are picturing any grand travels, I will hasten to say that a brief examination of the destination list settled the issue in no time. Of the four options, we were already in the New Forest, and Brighton was marked as 'Closed for Repairs,' leaving only Yarmouth and Blackpool. While it would matter less these days, when so many families have either diminished or moved away from their traditional home towns, there were then so many Longbottoms in the Blackpool area that I would almost of a certainty been recognised. On a black horse and a grey we went, therefore, to Yarmouth, and in the proper manner of a muggle nanny and gentleman friend, walked carefully up and down the pier until our return tickets were due. It was a very pleasant afternoon.

Being autumn, it was almost dark when we returned to the tea-rooms, and the Waiter was watching out for us. "I'm very sorry, Moddom and Mister," he said politely, "but we close at Six. Rules, you know. May I show you the Way Out?"

I believe it has changed now, so I presume I will need to explain that it was once considered impolite to refer to an Apparition point as such. Not even the lowest house-elf would have dreamt of referring to it as anything other than 'the Exit' or, as the Waiter, 'the Way Out.' If there was a reason, I do not know it; such was simply the way well-bred people were brought up. Six o'clock was also, of course, the hour at which I was due back in the general muggle world of the Banks household and my Great Adventure, so Bert and I walked briskly behind the Waiter as he led the way through the trees. Looking back, perhaps there was more magic in the air than simply that which had charmed the tea-rooms into opening and its trees into leaf for the day, for as we walked, I put my hand through Bert's arm. On the other wand, of course, it may simply have been cold, for I know I drew the silk dress cloak tighter about me. But I know that I had forgiven him for the cunning.

"It's a wonderful picture you've drawn this time," I said, needling him just very slightly.

I am glad that I said it, for it has left me with a longer-than-life memory of Bert's modest yet happy smile, looking as he had before the unfortunate incident with the Royal Academy and Azkaban left just a tinge of well-hidden disappointment forever on his face.

"Well, I did my best, Mary," he said.

Perhaps we would have said more; these many years later, I do not know; but at that moment, the Waiter stopped in front of us. "Here you are," he said, gesturing to a large white doorway that stood by itself in the middle of a grassy clearing. "This is the Way Out."

It was in those days most improper for a well-bred witch dealing with a servant, but I shook his hand. It had, after all, been as much his generosity in the effort as it had clearly been Bert's in the planning. "Goodbye, and thank you."

He understood, for he bowed very low. "Moddom, goodbye!"

Bert, the irresponsible muggle-born, simply cocked his hat on one side and closed one eye in a wink, at which improper method of bidding farewell I shook my head disapprovingly. Man-like, they both ignored me and the Waiter nodded at Bert; and then Bert and I stepped together through the doorway and turned in still surprisingly easy synchronous Apparition back to that London pavement.

I had known all along they were nothing more than charm-work, but I can still recall the tinge of sadness as, in the crush of Apparition, the feather dropped from my hat, and the silk cloak and diamond buckles vanished, and Bert's bright clothes and straw boater faded and frayed into his old cap and shabby suit. We landed in the spot on the pavement we had left from, and I stood and looked at Bert for a minute, without speaking. Then I turned, and looked at the picture, but the tea-rooms and the Waiter and the Merry-Go-Round had all gone, as thoroughly as if they had stepped into that Patented Intelligent Vanishing Cabinet with the unfortunate habit of eating people which caused the Ministry-wide scandal and investigation into the Office of Ludicrous Patents' safety testing standards known as the the Patently Unsafe Scandal a few years ago. Only the still trees and the grass and the little unmoving patch of sea remained.

But – and unless you are old like I, I fear you will not understand this – Bert and I smiled at each other. For we knew what lay behind the trees. You may still find the tea-rooms; only he and I, and now only I, could find again the second golden afternoon we had stored there.

I can illustrate this point by my return at six o'clock precisely to Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane. Jane and Michael came running to meet me. "Where have you been? Where have you been?"

I could not explain to muggle children that I had been to Hampshire and the seaside, but, perhaps foolishly, perhaps a little too mellowed by my afternoon, I gave them the truth as a muggle would have interpreted it: "In Fairyland."

Amusingly, they took me at what they thought was my word.

"Did you see Cinderella?" asked Jane.

"Huh, Cinderella? Not me!" I was obliged to sound contemptuous, for fear I should laugh at the idea of what Bert might say, given the cloak and diamonds. "Cinderella, indeed!"

"Or Robinson Crusoe?" Michael asked.

Even now, the idea of Bert and that suggestion brings a smile to my face. I looked very stern. "Robinson Crusoe – pooh!"

They looked bewildered. "Then how could you have been there? It couldn't have been _our _ Fairyland?"

Do you see what I mean? I sniffed.

"Don't you know that everybody's got a Fairyland of their own?"

And I went upstairs with another sniff to take off my white gloves and put the parrot umbrella away before Bert's silencing charm wore off it.

~:~:~


	4. Chapter 3: In which we go UP to tea

**Chapter 3: In which we go UP to tea**

_A/N: Yes, it has been a very, very long time since I updated this fic! But I had not forgotten Mary P (impossible, in case you ever try it) and am now trying to get it finished, or at least a lot further, for this year's NaNoWriMo. More should therefore be coming. In the meantime, enjoy!  
_

_~:~:~:~_

"Are you quite sure he will be at home?" said Jane as we got off the Bus.

I will confess that it was with no little irritation that I looked down at her. It was not the question in itself; simply that it was the fifth time Jane had asked it since we had left Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane and the fifteenth time I had been asked it that day. While I knew that, in the way of muggles, there was no particular malice in their vacant-minded questioning (especially that of Ellen the Troll-like housemaid who achieved the remarkable feat of making house-elves look intelligent), that does not prevent repetition becoming galling, particularly when it cast an unintentional slur upon one's family. It was nearly as bad as the parrot!

"Would my Uncle ask me to bring you to tea if he intended to go out, I'd like to know?" I retorted sharply.

Perhaps it was, really, a little more sharp than the situation justified. But on top of my irritation, I too was beginning to question the wisdom of this entire outing. It had begun before breakfast two weeks earlier; or perhaps you could say it had begun many years before I was born, when one of my more distant cousins had married a wizard of no particular family by the name of Wigg. I do not think at the time that there was any suggestion of his being muggle-born, or the wedding would surely have been prevented as making a bad mark upon the family name. As it was, people merely commented on how third-cousin-Cygnia, who had such very little to commend her in matrimonial terms, had finally made a match. Suspicion arose afterwards. They had one son, Albert, some few years older than myself, although the generations put he and I at the ranks of uncle and niece. I may safely give you his true name, for you will not find Albert Wigg within the pages of 'Nature's Nobility' or any such work. If the same publishers produced a black-list of those disinherited by their families, he would feature rather prominently.

American muggles have, I believe, an expression which runs "Three strikes and you're out" – something relating to that strange ball game they play in buildings resembling a quarter Quidditch pitch. But the origin of the expression is not really important. Simply, the same concept applied to Uncle Albert. He was sorted into Hufflepuff, while we all belong in Slytherin. He refused to get married at all, no matter what the duty owed to the ancient and most noble family name. And he appeared so many times before the DMLE on charges of Using Magic in the Presence of Muggles they took to treating him somewhat benevolently and laying on cream-cakes to celebrate his visits.

It was not that Uncle Albert ever took any kind of interest in muggles. Rather, he displayed a catastrophic laxity in regard to them, to the point where the rest of our extended family began to first whisper and then comment openly that anyone of proper wizarding descent and discretion would not, nay, could not behave like that. Discretion and Uncle Albert were not well acquainted. He saw no harm in apparating into the middle of a crowded street, nor in going into a muggle public house and trying to pay with Galleons. As he said so many times to the Ministry, 'he forgot.' The only conclusion a Noble and Most Ancient House could draw was that of impure ancestry. Third-cousin Cygnia could not be faulted. But was not 'Wigg' the name of a muggle organisation in some way connected with their mysterious government?

By the time I left Hogwarts, the case against Uncle Albert was quite final, and everybody had settled down to studiously disbelieving any association of he with us. The one spider in the potion for this approach was, of course, Uncle Albert himself. Just as he forgot Ministry warnings about appropriate behaviour around muggles, he forgot snubs and cold shoulders and doors shut in his face. To his last days, Uncle Albert remained a sort of family ghost, capable of materialising where and when he was least wanted, and all too likely to do so.

From my own position of eccentricity, I grew up uncertain that Uncle Albert was quite as terrible as everyone said he was. It was true that he made his frequent visits to the Ministry, but if they did not consider him criminal in doing so, was it really a never to be spoken of shame upon the family? Did we not have many other cousins and acquaintances who made frequent visits to various Ministry departments, which were not always so pleased to see them?

On a less logical and more personal level, Uncle Albert's blithe forays into the muggle world provided me with plenty of information to fuel my early curiosity. When he discovered my interest, he was in his own absent minded way an enthusiastic supporter. Indeed, I was on a number of occasions obliged to snub him as firmly as my family would have wished me to, in order to avoid becoming embroiled in a trip to the Ministry myself.

But all this does not quite explain what I was doing with Jane and Michael, descending from a muggle motor-omnibus in the middle of a Friday afternoon. The sight would probably have caused every ancestor I ever had to turn in their graves, and elicited exclamations of horror from every living relative, but since the entire of my Great Adventure would also have done so, I confess the fact did not weigh heavily upon me. Perhaps, if I had thought of it and not merely been thinking about ensuring that Michael descended properly rather than jumping down, I would have been least concerned in those particular circumstances. Travelling on a motor-omnibus was, and has remained, an exceptional pleasure of mine.

You may be surprised; certainly most of those from our world would have been so at the time. Or perhaps you may not be, since, of course, our world has now adopted this mode of transport in the form of the Knight Bus. Yet somehow, we have never achieved the smoothness and reliability of service of which a good conductor and motor-omnibus were capable, despite the fact that muggles are unable to employ charms to assist with heavy traffic.

The opposite is true, of course, in the magical side of that excellent system of railways which we have not been shy about adopting for our own use. Our own trains, as you will know from your years of travelling to Hogwarts, run without a hitch; muggle trains are frequently behind schedule, and have always suffered a great deal from poor connections, even in the days before they illogically closed many of the lines. It was, I have always thought, one of the greatest occasions for, and most missed opportunity of, integration between their world and ours,when muggles were left to their own devices to so devastate the railway network under the misguided advice of their Doctor Beeching. His title sometimes strikes me as ironic, in light of the admittedly juvenile but candid definition of 'doctor' given by some of my youngest relatives, viz: "those muggle nutters that cut things up."

Belated individual intervention did, it is true, save some routes. Even today it is possible to travel by rail into the South-West as far as Okehampton. But of the lines that ran on into Cornwall? Or to the once popular magical holiday destinations along the mid-Wales coast? The muggles have a saying which is, I think, most apt: '_Of all the words of tongue or pen, the saddest are – it might have been!' _The misguided choice of the Minister for Magic of the day, in refusing to even raise the matter with the muggle Prime Minister, has permanently lost to us the majority of what was our most important method of transport.

But repining is vain, and so I must turn my recollections back to the origins of my outing with Jane and Michael that now long-ago Friday afternoon. It had started with a tap on the nursery window before breakfast, two weeks earlier. You will now appreciate my point about Uncle Albert and discretion. It was an owl, in broad daylight, sent to a muggle household.

The children were, fortunately, still asleep, or sufficiently near to it to believe they must have been dreaming, for no comment was passed. The same fortune continued to smile when, with Uncle Albert's letter burning for an explanation in my pocket, I went downstairs to fetch the jug of hot water Ellen had failed to bring up, and was obliged to answer the front door to the postman. That, of course, should have been done by either Ellen or Robertson Aye, not a more respectable member of the household like myself. But, as I have indicated before, neither of them seemed to have any concept of being employed to a purpose, and Mrs Banks equally did not seem to have any inkling that she should instil this in them, let alone the capacity to do it. I concede, she was at a disadvantage with being unable to place a wakening hex on the permanently somnolent Robertson Aye.

However, answering that particular knock on that particular morning had turned out to be most convenient. I had received a letter, as I was quite entitled to do, and who was to say how it had come to me? The suggestion within the letter, I thought about deeply for much of the morning, before deciding that it was, according to all I had read, also within the bounds of legitimate and acceptable behaviour for a muggle nanny – quite disregarding the signal honour for two young muggles to be asked out to tea by a member of our Noble and Most Ancient House, even if it was one whom most of the members pretended didn't exist.

Therefore, I had sought out Mrs Banks with the most correct phrase for the situation: "May I speak to you, ma'am?" I am still unsure whether it was the fear I was about to give notice, for in such words did muggle servants in those days announce their imminent departure, or simply a fear of myself, that caused Mrs Banks to look so anxious during all our interviews. Whatever its origin, this anxiety had the advantage that, apart from the slight friction I have recorded in the previous chapter about the dates and times of my Days Out, Mrs Banks invariably acceded almost at once to any of my requests.

They were, I need not assure you, always reasonable. In this particular case, an Uncle of mine living in respectable bachelor lodgings in a slightly better part of town than Cherry Tree Lane, had invited me and my two older charges to Tea. What could have been more acceptable, reasonable or convenient than that?

It was particularly so because the date he had proposed was that of both Mrs Brill's day off and an important bridge party given by one of the 'better people' in Mrs Banks' social circle, two occasions for which the absence of Jane and Michael was not only tolerable but desirable. How Uncle Albert had managed to divine these dates I did not wish to know. I still believe that I was wisest in choosing to adopt the muggle attitude of pretending it was a coincidence.

Mrs Banks had agreed at once, and so two weeks later, on the afternoon I am recounting, I had left John and Barbara in the care of Ellen, seen both Mrs Brill and Mrs Banks safely off the premises, and walked with Jane and Michael to the corner of Cherry Tree Lane, where we had hailed an omnibus. I had left the parrot at home as well. The possibility of _his_ remaining silent during an afternoon visiting was very slim; the possibility of Uncle Albert not commenting upon the parrot and its ways was non-existent. If it said anything to the twins, they were of an age unable to repeat it and unlikely to remember it. I felt the latter rule was likely to apply to Ellen as well, particularly as she was taking advantage of Mrs Banks being out to read _The People's Friend – _ a lower-class muggle magazine full of supposedly thrilling romantic stories, which Ellen worked through one word at a time, occasionally having to spell longer ones out loud. An earthquake might have attracted Ellen's attention when she was reading; a talking parrot umbrella would not.

It was not as I recall, a very long 'bus ride between Cherry Tree Lane and Robertson Road, and we did not need to change. I will confess, I had been a little surprised on reading Uncle Albert's letter to discover just how close he lived. If I had known beforehand, this proximity might have made me hesitate over accepting my post in the Banks' household. You may be thinking it a little strange that I was not acquainted with my uncle's address as a matter of course, but Uncle Albert tended to move quite often, especially when his visits to the DMLE had been connected with his various muggle landladies, and Forwarding Addresses were something else he excelled at forgetting.

Had I known, I would have been concerned that Uncle Albert would also have been quite capable of forgetting that I was 'in service' and therefore not open to entertaining random visitors, or that the family I was living with were muggles and therefore not open to visits by Floo, or really any other such indiscretion. Recollections of such tendencies on Uncle Albert's part had, in a nagging way, concerned me for the proceeding fortnight, and in the face of the ceaseless questioning on the day itself, had bloomed into serious doubts about the whole visit altogether.

Michael, with his simpler muggle mind, had an entirely different concern. "Why is he called Mr Wigg – does he wear one?"

"He is called Mr Wigg because Mr Wigg is his name. And he doesn't wear one. He is bald," I said sharply. It has never been the misfortune of our family to go bald! That Uncle Albert had done so was further evidence that third-cousin Cygnia had made an unfortunate match, but there was no need for muggles to pry into it! I sniffed. "And if I have any more questions, we will just go Back Home."

This threat had the desired effect upon both children, for they fell silent, although as we approached the junction into Robertson Road, in the long reflective windows of the Tobacconist Shop on the corner I could see Jane and Michael frowning at one another. I forbore to comment. As I have indicated in earlier pages of these memoirs, I have never been a very enthusiastic subscriber to the many maxims on emotions and appearance. My mother would doubtless have said that well-bred witches, even small ones, never show their feelings by word or deed, most especially in a muggle street. But I am not sure that she or anyone else was happier for this iron self control – and the two small creatures in question were only muggles. I concentrated instead on my appearance in the triple reflections of the Tobacconist Shop window.

The nature of their reflective surfaces was something I grew to deeply appreciate during my Great Adventure with the muggles; to such an extent that, I confess, in later years I went as far as to purchase a muggle-made triple mirror of my own. Muggle mirrors reflect just as well as those made in our own world, and if you chose a reputable furniture store in the better parts of London or the nicer Home Counties towns, you can still have a teak or mahogany frame. In contradiction to what the geography books for young witches and wizards available in my youth said, the supply of such woods is not restricted only to our own world. It is true that muggles have, in more recent years, grown cautious about using them, preferring to use pine or other cheaper woods which are supposed to be more resilient to this 'Global Warming' they are afraid of. I fail to understand the slightest vestige of even muggle logic behind this. Any wood is inherently inflammable; the choice of one type or another makes very little difference. Given that they do not have fire-retardant charms, it seems strange they should choose to use more of a particularly combustible timber when faced with this increased fire risk or whatever it is.

But muggle oddities and choices of wood are quite beside the point, as even are mirror frames. The greatest and most enduring attraction of any muggle reflective surface, be it a window or a mirror, is that it does not pass comment. This is probably just as well, particularly in these days. When one sees the parade of skimpily, poorly clad muggles on a typical modern high street, endangering their own health by exposure to cold air, to say nothing of violating every tenet of Good Taste, one cannot help feeling that the large reflective windows of the shops, if given sentience, would be either raising ceaseless clamour or cracking in mortification.

The Tobacconist Shop's triple window on the day of our visit to Mr Wigg's was in no such danger. It reflected, in satisfying triplicate, a most respectable appearance. Miss Malkin, I felt, had done herself and my designs particularly proud in producing this full length blue coat with its silver buttons and matching blue hat.

I will admit, I lingered for a moment, turning slightly this way and that to admire it – and also, lest you think I was too vain, to see that all was as it should be. Commendable as a method of transport though muggle omnibuses may have been, that did not mean they did not occasionally leave one's attire a little rumpled, particularly when you had two small children to sit between. There is also the risk that some previous occupant of the seat may have left dirt of some kind upon it. Muggle gentlemen were especial offenders this way in those days, as they often continued to smoke while on board, leaving ash upon the seats.

My father always told my brothers, as he himself had been told by his father, and doubtless _his_ father in turn, that all pipes must be extinguished before travelling, unless you wished to swallow a spark and be mistaken for a dragon. If I am not mistaken by the many and prominent signs now displayed in the muggle world, they have finally come to recognise the wisdom of this rule, and in a bid to atone for their earlier slackness, have forbidden smoking of any kind in almost all public places. It is not a rule I necessarily wish the magical world could adopt, but I do wish sometimes that more of an effort could be made to make our own people aware of the muggle rule and the necessity to abide by it in places where muggles are. It is of no use to dress like a muggle in order to not attract attention, if you then loudly advertise yourself by a cloud of purple tobacco smoke.

"Come along," I said sternly, catching sight of yet another long face of Michael's in the glass. He might be only a muggle, but any boy, muggle or magical, old enough to walk is quite old enough to behave like a gentleman and wait patiently while a lady is putting her hat straight! We went briskly round the corner and I pulled the bell at Number Three.

"If he's in, of course," Jane whispered to Michael behind me.

Both grammar and sentiment in that sentence were wrong, of course, but I did not have time to correct her before the door flew open and a thin, watery looking lady appeared. Given the events which followed, I use the word 'lady' reluctantly, but at that moment I had not yet made any acquaintance with the character of Uncle Albert's landlady, so it was only polite to think of her in the most charitable terms, however little confidence her general appearance inspired in me.

I had barely opened my mouth to address her when Michael butted in, in a most ill-bred manner. "Is he in?"

Alas, one cannot correct a misplaced 'he' in the way that 'she' is said to be the house-elf's mother, without mentioning subjects into which small children should not be encouraged to speculate. All I could do was to glance sternly down at Michael.

"I'll thank you to let _me_ do the talking."

I do not think Jane meant to be deliberately disobedient to this command. Irritatingly careless and inattentive as she was, on occasion she did make efforts to be as thoughtful and polite as at least the will of the wisp example of her mother had impressed upon her muggle intellect. In light of this, I could not really fault her misplaced intrusion at that moment.

"How do you do, Mrs Wigg?"

A well-bred person, even a muggle, would have appreciated the innocent motive and had the grace to overlook the tactlessness. But my suspicion that the weedy creature before us was about as jumped up and ill-bred a muggle as could be found while still in a relatively respectable neighbourhood was instantly confirmed. "Mrs Wigg!" she exclaimed, in a thin, weedy voice which made her figure look plump by comparison. "I'm plain Miss Persimmon _and _proud of it! Mrs Wigg indeed!"

'Indeed' was perhaps the most appropriate word, although I refrained from passing any such low-mannered remark. No matter what one might think of the rest of Uncle Albert's choices in life, it was quite beyond question that anyone from our family would ever have dreamed of taking this woman into a state of matrimony. Indeed, to repeat the word again, if one took, as I did and always have, a benevolent view of Uncle Albert's eccentricities as covering a kind heart and essentially if perhaps overly good nature, he of all of us was least likely to have done so. Money, beauty or social status, if she had had any of these, might have tempted some of my cousins; Uncle Albert would have been attracted only by someone with a heart as large as his own.

Perhaps fortunately, as her poor manners and my reflections upon them might have drawn out some inappropriate tone on my part, I was at that moment spared the necessity of addressing the woman. She paused in her indignant squeaks, cast half a glance at me and said "Straight up and first door on the landing!"

That, apparently, was all the explanation or introduction she considered necessary. Without further ado, she hurried off down the passage, still exclaiming "Mrs Wigg indeed!" in that silly little mouse-like voice.

I would have liked to point out to the children, as my mother would have done to me when I was a child if we had been dealing with a witch, just how very upset their inappropriate behaviour had made their hostess. But in the view of her own inappropriate behaviour, it was really impossible to point any moral at all, so I simply led the way up the stairs. Both the children crowded practically onto my heels, sufficiently close that when I knocked on the door and Uncle Albert's loud and cheery voice called out "Come in! Come in! And welcome!" I heard Jane whisper to Michael:

"He _is_ in!"

I attribute to my momentary irritation, caused by this reminder of the immense doubt an invitation to Afternoon Tea from a member of my family had been held at Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane, the fact that I did not register from _outside_ the door that Uncle Albert's voice did not sound quite normal.

That all was not as it should have been, at least where muggles were involved, became instantly apparent when I opened the door and Jane and Michael stepped inside ahead of me. An ample muggle High Tea was set upon the table by the fire, with piles of bread and butter, crumpets, coconut cakes and a plum cake with pink icing any house-elf would have been proud of. The rest of the furniture was in good taste and order. Not a trace of magical possessions was to be seen. But neither was the occupant of the room.

I did not need to look down to see the children's eyes popping from their heads even further than they had done on the day of my arrival at Number 17.

"Well this is indeed a Pleasure!" boomed Uncle Albert's voice, and I turned sharply to look up at the ceiling from where it came. You had probably been imagining an invisibility cloak, but Uncle Albert's means would never have run to such an expensive item, not to mention that he would probably have lost it or given it away to a chilly looking muggle without a waterproof coat within about three days of purchasing it. Such an incident, although involving an enchanted fur cloak which purred, rather than an invisibility one, had been responsible for one of Uncle Albert's trips to have cream-cakes with the DMLE in the past. But for the most part, Uncle Albert's magic tended to the far less subtle – as was the case now. _I_ would not have described it as a Pleasure, but the word was one he always used to refer to his continued idle researches into levitation. Seventeen times that I knew of-!

The suppression of emotion was impossible. "Oh, Uncle Albert," I said crossly. "Not _again!_ It's not your birthday, is it?"

The latter question, I fully realise now, as indeed I did a moment after uttering it, was completely ridiculous. But I ask you, before judging too harshly, to imagine yourselves when in the sole charge of two curious and impressionable young muggles, being suddenly faced with an older relative floating cross-legged in the air and reading no less than that morning's _Daily Prophet. _Eccentricity among adult muggles is no more tolerable than in those of age in our own world, except, or so I had gathered during my research, on their birthdays. And while it was a hope slimmer than a demiguise hair that this – _situation_ – might be passed off as a nativital eccentricity, I trust that you will understand it was a single strand of hope worth grasping.

Whatever the elder Mr Wigg's ancestry may or may not have been, there is no doubt Uncle Albert inherited at least some characteristics of our own Noble House from third-cousin Cygnia, for he rose to the occasion and my inane suggestion with a grace and aplomb the most respectable, Order-of-Merlin holding, wizard could barely have rivalled. "My dear, I'm very sorry but I'm afraid it _is_ my birthday."

He smiled graciously down upon the children, and then turned an apologetic face to me. As I could not, in the circumstances and company we were in, say even a fraction of what I wished to, I was obliged to content myself with tutting. "Tch, tch, tch!"

"I only remembered last night and there was no time then to send you a postcard asking you to come another day. Very distressing, isn't it?" Uncle Albert was, I am glad to be able to record, unable to look me in the face while telling this string of shocking falsehoods. He looked instead at Jane and Michael, who fortunately being unaware of such things as post owls and levitation charms, were also unaware of the terrible example of corrupt morals being set them.

"I can see you're rather surprised," he continued, which was a very mild way to put it, given that both the children were staring upwards with their mouths so wide open in astonishment they might easily have been taken for a pair of those mythical Gulping Plimpies, so often featured in a certain magical magazine, waiting for Uncle Albert to drop down into them.

"I'd better explain, I think," said Uncle Albert, with every outward appearance of perfect calm, although he still did not meet my indignant gaze. I presume it was with this sort of innocent aplomb and _bonhomie_ that he conducted himself at all those Ministry hearings, to so ingratiate himself with them to the point of cream cakes. "You see, it's this way. I'm a cheerful sort of man and very disposed to laughter. You wouldn't believe, either of you, the number of things that strike me as being funny."

Given that he was addressing two muggles, the last statement was at least true: they would not have; neither should they have!

"I can laugh at pretty nearly everything, I can," Uncle Albert chuckled. Whether it was from some memory of the things he had laughed at in the past, or from sheer hilarity at the outrageous situation then extant in that room, I still do not know, nor do I wish too, but what I did know was that Uncle Albert went from chuckling to absolute fits of laughter, to such a degree he began to bob up and down in the air.

"Uncle Albert!" I exclaimed sharply. I could not really say much more, but fortunately that seemed to suffice to restore a fraction of common sense. He stopped laughing with a jerk.

"Oh, beg pardon, my dear. Where was I? Oh yes. Well, the funny thing about me is–"

At this point I gave him the sternest and most fierce look I think I have ever given anybody. Uncle Albert told me in after years that I looked then like an exact three-way cross between young Cousin Walburga, a Hungarian Horntail and a Basilisk, only worse. The memory of it, like so many other things, made him laugh, so I do not think any lasting damage was done to our relationship, but at the time I would not have cared if I had literally petrified him. I was _not_ going to spend the rest of that afternoon having Jane and Michael's memories modified at the Ministry, to say nothing of having my Great Adventure end in utter and ignominious disaster!

My look, I think, succeeded, in as far as Uncle Albert returned to telling his string of reproachable falsehoods, in place of what had sounded as if it was going to be the even more reproachable truth. "All right, Mary, I won't laugh if I can help it!" – as if, of all things, it was his laughter I was objecting to! – "Whenever my birthday falls on a Friday, it's all up with me. Absolutely U.P."

"But why––?" began Jane.

"But how––?" began Michael.

"Well, you see, if I laugh on that particular day I become so filled with Laughing Gas that I simply can't keep on the ground. Even if I smile it happens. The first funny thought, and I'm up like a balloon. And until I can think of something serious I can't get down again."

At the ingenious mention of Laughing Gas, a well-known muggle substance they were in earlier ages wont to sample in public, I had just been beginning to think it was a shame that Uncle Albert had managed to waste his life idly experimenting with levitation in rooms rented from ill-mannered muggle landladies, instead of bringing respectable credit to the family name by becoming head of the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee. But I should have suspected worse of him, should have known that he would not be so sensible as to take the chance to pass the unfortunate position we had found him in off as a ill-timed chemical experiment, and come back to ground level and respectability. On the contrary, he proposed to pretend he was stuck up there indefinitely! And began to chuckle once more at the sheer humour of the idea!

I gave him another very stern look, in the hopes that might suffice as sufficiently serious to bring him down. It stopped the chuckle, but further than that failed. He continued in the same merry attitude:

"It's awkward, of course, but not unpleasant. Never happens to either of you, I suppose?"

Jane and Michael both shook their heads. Certainly, as muggles they had never been levitated six feet up into the air; neither had they been trained it was impolite to answer an older person's question only with their heads – an lapse in manners which sadly seems to have spread to the youngest generation of our own world as well.

"No, I thought not. It seems to be my own special habit. Once, after I'd been to the Circus the night before, I laughed so much that – would you believe it? – I was up here for a whole twelve hours, and couldn't get down till the last stroke of midnight. Then, of course, I came down with a flop because it was Saturday and not my birthday any more."

I sniffed, though I doubt either Uncle Albert or the children registered it. The entire of that tale could not have been true, given as you know, that the idea of levitation brought on by birthdays had been voiced by myself less than five minutes before, but I had no doubt that Uncle Albert could have, probably on many occasions, enchanted himself to levitate a little too well and ended up stuck in the air for hours. Frankly, it was all he deserved, going at his age to such a low form of entertainment as a muggle circus!

"It's rather odd, isn't it? Not to say funny?" Uncle Albert ploughed merrily on above me. "And now here it is Friday again and my birthday, and you two and Mary P. to visit me. Oh, Lordy, Lordy, don't make me laugh, I beg of you––"

At this particular injunction, both Jane and Michael looked a little startled, not comprehending what could be quite so funny as to set Uncle Albert into such loud laughter he began to bounce and bob through the air, flapping the _Daily Prophet _recklessly about in one hand and making his glasses slide to a precarious position half on and half off his nose.

I pursed my mouth further, for there was nothing so funny in telling such shocking falsehoods about his birthday – a respectable date in June, as both he and I knew perfectly well – and there was certainly nothing at all so funny in the name I had assumed for my Great Adventure! I could also see, from the way he floundered through the air like a giant human bubble, clutching at the ceiling and the gas-bracket as he passed them rather as the patrons of the Dragon &amp; Warlock pub on the corner of Knockturn and Diagon Alleys clutch at lamp-posts and door-frames when they are ejected at closing time, that there had obviously been some sort of Cheering Charm muddled in with that day's particular experiments in levitation.

It was, all in all, a most scandalous exhibition, and even more so for a member, even a distant and rather undesirable member, of a Noble and Most Ancient wizarding family before a pair of young muggles! The disgraceful influence of it became apparent a moment later, when first Jane and then Michael abandoned their manners and began to laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

I deeply regret to record it, but that was all the excuse Uncle Albert needed. He had only ever been accused of using magic in the _presence_ of muggles, never _on_ them, or the Ministry would not have been so lenient. But the children very quickly passed beyond the realms of normal, though improper, laughter, into the kind of abandonment brought on only by a vigorous Cheering Charm. They squealed with laughter, they shrieked with laughter, and quite disregarding their best coats, they fell down and rolled over and over on the floor.

"Really!" I said. "Really! _Such_ behaviour!" It was not aimed at the children, but Michael seemed to think it was.

"I can't help it! I can't help it!" he shrieked in quite unnecessary explanation, rolling into the fender. "It's so terribly funny! Oh Jane, _isn't_ it funny?"

Alas, Jane did not reply. From rolling across the floor, her coat totally rumpled and the toes of her freshly polished shoes doubtless getting scuffed, she suddenly took a sort of bouncing bound through the air until her head bumped on the ceiling. She bounced along it until she came to Uncle Albert.

That most reproachable person had the effrontery to act as if this was all a surprise. "_Well!"_ he said, in tones of utter astonishment. "Don't tell me it's _your_ birthday, too?" He must have lifted the worst excesses of the Cheering Charm, for Jane was able to shake her head, although not speak.

Uncle Albert answered his own question. "It's not? Then this Laughing Gas must be catching! Hi – whoa there, look out for the mantelpiece!" The latter remark was addressed to Michael, who on being levitated too, swooped rather exuberantly through the air and almost cleared the mantelpiece of its clutter of china ornaments.

I longed acutely to point out that it was hardly Michael's fault if Uncle Albert had failed to place sticking charms on the contents of his mantelpiece as all sensible people do, and also that he might be a little more careful with _my_ charge, given that heads are much harder to mend than china! But perhaps he detected this, for the end of Michael's wild flight was right on Uncle Albert's knee.

"How do you do?" said Uncle Albert, shaking him heartily by the hand. "I call this really friendly of you – bless my soul, I do! To come up to me since I couldn't come down to you – eh?" And at the sheer amusement of this, both of them flung back their heads and simply howled with laughter. It was a most scandalous exhibition, one which I hesitate to write about even now. And yet–

And that was always the problem with Uncle Albert. No matter how outrageous his deeds, there was always a good nature and kind heart behind them, with which it was impossible to be truly angry. He demonstrated this further by wiping his eyes and turning to Jane. "I say," he said, wiping his eyes. "You'll be thinking I have the worst manners in the world. You're standing and you ought to be sitting – a nice young lady like you. I'm afraid I can't offer you a chair up here, but I think you'll find the air quite comfortable to sit on. I do."

Whatever sort of charms Uncle Albert had applied, they certainly worked, for if my memory serves me correctly, Jane was not only able to sit down, but also to lay down her hat beside her.

That's right," said Uncle Albert blandly, and then turned to look down at me. "Well, Mary, we're fixed. And now I can enquire about _you_, my dear. I must say, I am very glad to welcome you and my two young friends here today – why, Mary, you're frowning. I'm afraid you don't approve of – er – all this."

It was, I think looking back on it, about the first true word he had said in the entire visit. But at the sheer effrontery of it, I confess I was left regrettably speechless. Uncle Albert, however, seemed to take my silence as something rather worrying, for he went on hurriedly:

"I apologise, Mary, my dear. But you know how it is with me. Still, I must say I never thought my two young friends here would catch it, really I didn't, Mary! I suppose I should have asked themf or another day or tried to think of something sad or something––"

I suppose it was a vain effort, given that the two children were at that moment, under the influence of cheering and levitating charms, sitting six feet up in the air, but I endeavoured to find words that trod the delicate path between truth and reproach on one hand, and the duty of concealing our magic from muggles on the other. "Well, I must say," I began primly, "that never in my life have I seen such a sight. And at your age, Uncle–"

"Mary Poppins, Mary Poppins, do come up!" Michael interrupted before I got any further. "Think of something funny and you'll find it's quite easy."

Teach your grandmother to keep flobberworms, as my grandmother would have said! I realise now that it was most unreasonable of me, for he did not know any better, and was, in fact, striving to make sense of a startling experience he as a muggle had never even dreamt of, but at the time I was distinctly annoyed. That a young muggle should give me advice about charm-work! I had been levitating objects before his _parents_ were even thought of, let alone himself!

"Ah, do now, Mary!" Uncle Albert added.

"We're lonely up here without you!" Jane put in kindly if untruthfully, and stretched her arms rather touchingly towards me. "_Do_ think of something funny!"

The earnestness with which they had believed his absurd tale of Laughing Gas was, as I recall, too much for Uncle Albert's very limited ability to behave as a member of our Noble and Most Ancient family ought, for he sighed in a manner expressive of more trouble ahead rather than any regret. "Ah, _she_ doesn't need to. She can come up if she wants to, even without laughing – and she knows it." He cast the most ridiculous look, which I presume he intended to be teasing or mysterious or some such, down at me standing on the hearth-rug.

There comes a point in some difficulties when making the best of things, as anyone from a respectable family ought to do, involves choosing the least of two or more evils, deciding as the saying goes, which head of the runespore you will argue with. I trust that you will understand this, and not criticise my decision that it would be best to attempt to treat the situation at Uncle Albert's as if it was perfectly ordinary.

"Well," I said, "it's all very silly and undignified, but, since you're all up there and don't seem able to get down" – I could not resist this slight dig at Uncle Albert's charm-work: if he was going to pretend he was stuck, I would to this day defy anyone in the same circumstances not to pretend to believe he _was_ stuck – "I suppose I'd better come up, too."

With that, I cast a quelling glare at Uncle Albert, lest he attempt to place the same Cheering and levitating charms on me as he had on Jane and Michael, put my arms neatly to my sides so my wand was safely hidden in the folds of my blue coat, and rose up through the air to sit down beside Jane. I regret that I was obliged, as it were, to accept the hospitality of Uncle Albert's charm-work in order to sit down, but I did not wish to further compound the situation by summoning myself a chair from floor-level, let along conjuring one in mid-air. The important thing was to behave as if all was normal – so I turned sharply to Jane.

"How many times, I should like to know, have I told you to take off your coat when you come into a hot room?" I unbuttoned the offending garment, and laid it neatly on the air beside her hat, then removed my own and laid it down as well.

"That's right, Mary, that's right," said Uncle Albert contentedly, and he laid down his paper, for once managing not to forget to fold it so only text columns, rather than the pictures, were visible and then leaned down and placed his glasses on the mantelpiece as if nothing could be more right than to sit in mid-air with two muggles. "Now we're all comfortable-"

"There's comfort _and_ comfort," I sniffed.

Apparently Uncle Albert did not notice this remark, for he continued complacently: "And now we can have tea-" At which point, it pleases me to be able to record, he did notice that something was amiss. "My goodness! How dreadful! I've just realised – the table's down there and we're up here. What are we going to do? We're here and it's there. It's an awful tragedy – awful! But oh, it's terribly comic!" And he hid his face in his handkerchief and laughed loudly into it.

I pause here to note that Uncle Albert was quite correct, in one sense, in referring to it as a tragedy. Tragedies, as opposed to merely tragic events, are those disasters which are precipitated by the stubborn actions of the protagonist following his own path to destruction, despite repeated warnings by wiser persons. I think you will agree that a more thorough description of that afternoon's events could hardly be wished for, although they did not, fortunately, end in the bloodbath typical of so many tragedies. He was incorrect, I believe, in also referring to it as terribly comic. The children did not think so, or at least under the lingering influence of their Cheering Charms the thought of going without their tea did not strike them, for they too laughed uproariously.

At this sight, Uncle Albert dried his eyes. From the way he was continually flourishing that handkerchief, I suspect he had his wand concealed in it – a rather obvious short-cut used by those who are less able in the ways of magic and have never fully mastered silent, wand-less spell casting.

"There's only one thing for it. We must think of something serious," he said, much to my relief for I had been more than expecting him to 'forget' and summon the tea-table up to us without a thought. "Something sad. Very sad." Jane and Michael promptly propped their chins on their hands as if in deep thought, but whatever they managed to think of was obviously far from sad or even serious, at least while still under a Cheering charm, for after a moment Jane smiled and Michael laughed out loud.

"There was my poor old Aunt Emily," mused Uncle Albert, alluding presumably to a Wigg relative, for no-one in our connection has ever had such a name. "She was run over by an omnibus. Sad. Very sad. Unbearably sad. But they saved her umbrella. That was funny, wasn't it?"

And as you are doubtless expecting, he began to tremble and heave and then burst with laughter at this idea of the rescued umbrella – if, of course, the entire tale was not a fabrication. I sniffed with disapproval again, for true or not, behaviour so unbecoming to a nephew should not have been exhibited before two young children. This time, Uncle Albert seemed to hear me.

"It's no good," he said, blowing his nose. "I give it up. And my young friends here seem to be no better at sadness than I am. Mary, can't _you_ do something? We want our tea."

I can only presume it was the same woebegone face, like a sad-eyed krup, which he turned on the DMLE and that was why they laid on the cream-cakes. But while it was perfect nonsense, the ridiculous situation into which Uncle Albert's tale had got us had left me with a choice only between letting my two young charges go without their tea until I could find an adequate combination of excuse and reason to get Uncle Albert to remove the levitation charms from them, or doing as he was cryptically suggesting. It would have been a poor reflection upon our family, not to mention myself, if they had gone home to report there had been no Tea. Little as I desired to perform yet more magic in the presence of muggles, I had even less desire to be upbraided for failing in my basic responsibilities by Mrs Banks. I did not trouble to answer or even look at Uncle Albert. I looked down at the table.

Levitation charms had _not_ been my line of research as they had been Uncle Albert's, but I must say that even today I am still pleased with the memory of how that slightly rickety muggle table, after a few moments wriggling and swaying, rose and soared through the room to take a graceful turn and land beside us, with Uncle Albert, as the host, at the head. The china cups may have rattled at little, a few cakes slipped from their precariously high stacks onto the cloth, but nothing had been left behind. As I noted a little wryly to myself at the time, it had not even endangered the mantelpiece ornaments in the way Uncle Albert's demonstrations in levitation that afternoon had done.

"Good girl!" said Uncle Albert, which was a very poor way of commending exceptional wand-less charm work, but at least he had noticed it. "I knew you'd fix something. Now, will you take the foot of the table and pour out, Mary? And the guests on either side of me? That's the idea."

I am still uncertain whether this last remark of Uncle Albert's was simply a commonplace reassurance to Jane and Michael, who had hurried bobbing through the air to sit down on either side of him, or that it meant all this had been his grand plan from the moment he sent the post-owl to me with the invitation. One could never be sure with Uncle Albert; and what he thought at one moment could be not at all what he thought the next – a regrettable casual-mindedness he sadly inherited from his mother. _My_ mother used to say it was a great pity the one thing third-cousin Cygnia had managed to stay in the same mind over was marrying "that Wigg."

Whatever his state of mind, as I recall Uncle Albert at that moment was smiling contentedly. "It is usual, I think, to begin with bread-and-butter," he said, nodding to Michael whose eyes were fixed on the cake. It must, though, be recorded to Michael's credit that at this hint from his host, he promptly shifted his gaze to the large plate of bread-and-butter. I trust you will not begrudge me a small glow of satisfaction, for he would certainly not have done such a thing at the first nursery tea I supervised! A little firm training, even over such a short time span, had done them a world of good. As I recall, Michael had also washed behind his ears that morning after only one reminder!

This leaves me somewhat uncertain as to in what light I should record Uncle Albert's next comment. Certainly, bread-and-butter should have been had; but it could be argued that Michael's behaviour did deserve some reward. At any rate, whether to the benefit or ruination of his manners and digestion, Uncle Albert provided it: "As it's my birthday, I think we will begin the wrong way – which I always think is the _right_ way – with the Cake!"

Upon which pronouncement, he cut a large slice for everybody. Uncle Albert was, if nothing else, always generous to a fault. There was, for a while, nothing of note but the sound of the children eating. Uncle Albert and I probably exchanged polite small talk about the weather or the omnibus journey, but I do not recall it. On the whole, Uncle Albert seemed content to watch the children, rather than converse, and after the hectic events of the past ten minutes – for that was really all the time we had spent in the room – I confess that I was a little at a loss for extensive conversation. The fact remained, too, that while Uncle Albert might be acting as if all was well, a great deal of magic had been used both in the presence of and _on_, not one but two, young muggles, even if they in their innocence did not comprehend it. With this preoccupying my mind, I think you will understand that I did not keep track of my role in pouring out quite as well as I might have done, and it was Uncle Albert who noticed that Jane had drained her cup.

"More tea?" he asked. A trivial question, but before Jane had time to answer, before I even had time to reach for the tea-pot lest Uncle Albert summon it to pour out himself, there was a quick, sharp knock at the door. "Come in!" Uncle Albert called.

You have, I am sure, frozen in something of the same horror that I did at that moment. For there was only one person who ought to have been knocking on the door – unless Uncle Albert was expecting more, as yet unmentioned, visitors – and in neither case should they have seen two muggle children, to say nothing of myself, having tea while floating in mid-air!

The door opened. Miss Persimmon stood there, with a jug of hot water on a tray. Given that Uncle Albert had a kettle at the side of the fireplace, to say nothing of instant boiling charms, it was quite obvious she was only coming up in order to pry! "I thought, Mr Wigg," she began, looking beadily about, "you'd be wanting some more hot–" At that moment she looked up.

"Well, I never! I simply _never!" _she gasped out. "Such goings on I never did see! In all my born days I never saw such. I'm sure, Mr Wigg, I always knew _you _were a bit odd. But I've closed my eyes to it – being as how you paid your rent regular. But such behaviour as this – having tea in the air with your guests – Mr Wigg, I'm astonished at you! It's that undignified – and for a gentleman of your age – I never did –"

I should, I know, have been concerned that she might rush outside and fetch a muggle policeman, just as a witch at the same sight would have been sending post haste for the DMLE. But honesty compels me to admit that I did not even think of it; had even forgotten my annoyance at Uncle Albert's own forgetfulness in calling the woman to come in. Perhaps Cousin Elladora was not really as far removed as I hoped she was, much less than I wish she was. For I can still remember, nay, even feel, the sharp tingle of anger which rushed through me at her words. That little, weedy, common muggle! Berating one of our own Noble and Most Ancient House with a comparison to her own miserly self-righteousness and accusing him of having the only one merit of paying his rent reliably! And to term it _'such goings on'_! It was true that she was looking at four people and a tea table floating in the air, but it was not as if anything so very terrible was happening!

Michael's voice broke into my thoughts and Miss Persimmon's continuing stream of reproach. "But perhaps you will, Miss Persimmon!"

She looked at him haughtily – a haughtiness which gave me yet another stab of irritation, for Michael might have been a muggle, but he was still a muggle from a respectable family whose head of household was a banker, not some penny-pinching landlady! "Will what?" she demanded – most ungrammatically.

"Catch the Laughing Gas, as we did." Michael said it with such innocent sincerity, Uncle Albert ought to have been stricken with remorse for the shocking deceptions he had practised on two small children, though I fear he will have merely taken it as evidence that he had got away with his scandalous behaviour yet again. Though, it is true, I am not in a position to be able to criticise, in terms of using magic upon muggles. As Miss Persimmon flung back her head scornfully, Michael's suggestion, my own irritation, and something of the whole 'forgetfulness' which existed like an aura around Uncle Albert came, regrettably, together.

"I hope, young man, I have more respect for myself than to go bouncing about in the air like a rubber ball on the end of a bat. I'll stay on my own feet, thank you, or my name's not Amy Persimmon, and – oh dear, oh _dear,_ my goodness, oh _DEAR – _what _is_ the matter? I can't walk, I'm going, I – _oh, help, HELP!"_

There are, in my view, times and places for a little corrective magic, even on muggles. It was only the mildest and gentlest of levitation charms, but like the foolish muggle she was, Uncle Albert's landlady shrieked and stumbled and generally threw herself about as she rose gently, carefully, up through the air to the tea-table. There was, as I recall,very little of that hot water left in the jug by the time she reached us, and that was _not_ to do with my charm work. Her state of tearful distress was such that she said not a word in reply to my calm and polite thanks, but turned at once and began to stumble downwards again, murmuring in her silly little voice as she went something about "undignified," " a well-behaved, steady-going woman," and "must see a doctor." When she reached the ground, she hurried away and shut the door without a backward glance, still wringing her hands and moaning about "so undignified."

In retrospect, I think you might say that the incident justified itself, as we must always be careful to do when displaying and using magic on muggles. It would not be at all proper to take a muggle to St Mungo's, except when they must go to have their memories modified. At this point, it matters not what they see, for any disturbance to their view of life will soon be corrected. In the case of Miss Persimmon, her brief flight through the air had clearly quite obscured her self-righteousness outrage over finding us having tea in the air, with concern about her own state of mind. Doubtless, she would have retired to the kitchen and had several cups of strong tea, probably in the end deciding it had all been a dream.

To the children, by contrast, it was all in the nature of the most exciting Afternoon Tea they had ever had, and a flying landlady seemed only to add to this. "Her name can't be Amy Persimmon, because she _didn't_ stay on her own feet!" I heard Jane whispering to Michael, in a tone of definite glee.

What Michael said in return I missed, for at that moment I caught sight of Uncle Albert's quizzical gaze upon myself. Truly, he had absolutely _no_ room to look at anyone over the matter, since this had all begun with his ill-advised levitation at the moment of our arrival, but looking he was. Half-amused, half-accusing, he shook his head at me. "Mary, Mary, you shouldn't – bless my soul, you shouldn't, Mary. The poor old body will never get over it." If Uncle Albert had meant to inspire remorse, I confess that he failed – probably because a burst of his usual, easily amused good humour came over him at that point. "But, oh, my goodness, didn't she look funny waddling through the air – my Goodness Gracious, but didn't she?"

I am to this day unsure if it was still the effects of the initial Cheering Charms, which can last a considerably long time, especially on a young and unaccustomed mind, or if Uncle Albert's solemn reproaches to me had been a cover to distract me while he placed fresh charms on my two charges. Whichever it was, Uncle Albert's last exclamation set not only himself but Jane and Michael back into uproarious laughter, all rolling about the air like a litter of krups on a floor, holding their sides and veritably gasping with amusement at the thought of how funny Miss Persimmon had looked.

"Oh dear!" said Michael. "Don't make me laugh any more. I can't stand it. I shall break!"

"Oh, oh, oh!" cried Jane, equally abandoned to hysterical hilarity.

Louder than both of them roared Uncle Albert. "Oh, my Gracious, Glorious, Galumphing Goodness!" I was relieved he had not, even in his wild amusement, managed to forget to change the alliterative adjectives of his exclamation to those suitable for a muggle's ears. He _had_ forgotten his handkerchief, and was dabbing at his eyes with his coat-tails – a place ill suited to the concealment of a wand, so perhaps I do him an injustice in suspecting further enchantments upon the children. Certainly, they had eaten enough sweet and sugary dainties at Tea to have led to no end of excitement and inappropriate behaviour without any aid of magic.

What did become quite certain was that unless I did something, we could well be here for hours, even days, before Uncle Albert would realise that he had, once more, forgotten himself. The problem of magic used on muggles was one I could see at the time I might have to address; the problem of not returning home in time for the nursery baths and bed was one I would certainly have to address, unless we descended at once. I could hardly have used yet more magic to delay the time of the last omnibus back to Cherry Tree Lane.

I raised my voice. "IT IS TIME TO GO HOME."

I fear that I startled Uncle Albert rather more than I intended to, for while I and the Tea Table descended gently from the air, Jane and Michael and Uncle Albert himself all came down with a hard and sudden bump.

Uncle Albert sighed as he stood up from the floor. "Well, isn't that a pity? It's very sad that you've got to go home. I never enjoyed an afternoon so much – did you?"

Owing, obviously, to the company we were in, I was unable to give him any sort of answer to that question, let alone a candid one, but I may assure you it may be inferred from the opposite of what the children had to say. It is always polite to thank your host at the end of a visit, but I do not think it was merely out a sense of duty and politeness that Michael shook his head in agreement and Jane stood on tip-toe to kiss Uncle Albert's withered-apple cheek.

"Never," they both said. "Never, never, never, never, never..."

For that, I suppose, I must be thankful. Thankful was not, however, quite what I felt as we sat on the omnibus on the way home. The children were both very quiet – a state of affair which never lasts long with the young, be they muggle or magical. Michael spoke up, picking of all moments a lull in the noise of the 'bus engine as it waited at a crossroads, so that any one of the random muggles aboard might have heard!

"How often does your Uncle get like that?"

One would have thought he drank, or something! "Like what?" I said sharply. It was intended to be a silencing reproof, but Michael in his usual way missed that point completely.

"Well – all bouncy and boundy and laughing and going up in the air."

There is a time and a place for letting muggles make their own explanations, but there is also a time and a place for a firm denial that anything at all has happened, in as far as this may be done without actually telling falsehoods. I trust you will understand that the middle of a muggle omnibus is the place for the latter. "Up in the air?" I demanded indignantly. "What do you mean, pray, up in the air?"

Jane seemed to think I needed some sort of explanation. "Michael means – is your Uncle often full of Laughing Gas, and does he often go rolling and bobbing about on the ceiling when–"

I cut her off before she got any further. I was having none of this sort of nonsense! "Rolling and bobbing! What an idea! Rolling and bobbing on the ceiling! You'll be telling me next he's a balloon!" I sniffed for good measure – in addition to mentally noting down a few sharp truths I planned to, and indeed did, say to Uncle Albert next time I met him.

"But he did," Michael protested sleepily. "We saw him."

I sat up straighter in pure indignation. "What, roll and bob? How dare you! I'll have you know my Uncle is a sober, honest, hard-working man-" (I know you are thinking this latter part of characterisation was a definite over-exaggeration, but at that moment it was as much for the conductor who was working his way towards us) "- and you'll be kind enough to speak of him respectfully. And don't bite your Bus tickets! Roll and bob – the idea!"

Thankfully, at that they said no more. The Bus roared on towards Cherry Tree Lane, doing a fair bit of rolling and bobbing of its own. And gradually, after such an exciting and energetic afternoon, the children gave up casting wondering looks at each other, and crept closer to my side, and slowly leaned against me and fell asleep, as if nothing had really happened at all.

Neither they nor I ever spoke of it again. But I remain thankful that I did not take the parrot.

~:~:~


End file.
